Background

Ethnicity: Laura's paternal grandfather was Jewish, and the remainder of her ancestry is Scots-Irish.

Laura Lippman was born on January 31, 1959, in Atlanta, Georgia, the daughter of Theo Lippman, who was also a writer, and Madeline (Mabry) Lippman, a retired school librarian for the Baltimore City Public School System.

Education

Laura first attended high school in Columbia, Maryland and then graduated from Wilde Lake High School in 1977. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.

Career

Upon graduating from Northwestern, Lippman returned to her home in Baltimore, where she began what would be a twenty-year career in journalism, twelve of which would be served with the newspaper The Baltimore Sun. In Baltimore, Lippman began her career as a reporter working for The Baltimore Sun and the San Antonio Light, a paper that has since closed. Lippman has become entrenched in the Baltimore arts scene. Her husband, David Simon, is the creator and Executive Producer of the acclaimed HBO series The Wire, which follows the reporters, police, and criminals of the city of Baltimore. Lippman guest starred in a cameo role working for the Baltimore Sun in an early episode on the series.

Lippman fully retired from journalism in 2001 in order to fully concentrate on her career as a novelist. Before leaving, Lippman had already published seven novels in the Tess Monaghan series. In addition to her work on this series, totaling 11 books to date, Lippman has also published eight standalone novels, as well as numerous short stories. Laura Lippman’s writing has been favorably reviewed by multiple institutions. The Washington Post says Lippman is “one of the best novelists around, period.” Booklist says “Lippman’s taut, mesmerizing, and exceptionally smart drama of predator and prey is at once unusually sensitive and utterly compelling.”

In 2010, renowned actress Frances McDormand purchased the rights to Lippman’s standalone novel Every Secret Thing. The film is scheduled for release in the first half of 2015, after receiving extremely high praise after it’s April showing at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2014. The film, produced by McDormand and directed by Amy Berg, stars Diane Lane, Elizabeth Banks, and Dakota Fanning. The book follows an 18-year-old named Alice Manning, who becomes a suspect in the disappearance of a child.

Most of Lippman’s writing is centered in and around Baltimore. Baltimore is a city with a long history of art and crime, made a significant impact on Lippman’s many varied characters and stories, none more than Tess Monaghan. Tess Monaghan is a reporter in Baltimore who, at the onset of the series, has ‘accidentally’ turned Private Investigator. Beginning in the novel Baltimore Blues, P.I. Tess Monaghan explores some of the more sinister cases in Baltimore, solving them with unmatched tenacity.

In addition to the Tess Monaghan series, Lippman has also written a large variety of short stories. Of note is one story in particular, Easy as ABC, which is collected in the anthology Baltimore Noir. Each story is set in a different neighborhood in Baltimore. Lippman’s story takes place in Locust Point, the area that houses the famed Fort McHenry. Lippman also pens the foreword to this collection, in which she discusses why Baltimore is the perfect setting for noir-style stories. Noir fiction is characterized by an often-victimized protagonist plunged deep into a corrupt and lawless world. Thus, Laura Lippman’s hometown of Baltimore makes the most compelling setting for these stories, and indeed, the large body of her collected works.

Currently, she lives in Baltimore with her partner, the writer David Simon, and their daughter.

Achievements

• 

  Laura Lippman is a New York Times bestselling novelist who has won more than twenty awards for her fiction, including the Edgar Award - and been nominated for thirty more. Since her debut in 1997, she has published twenty-one novels, a novella, a children’s book, and a collection of short stories. Her books have been translated into over twenty languages. LitHub named her one of the “essential” female crime writers of the last hundred years. She also has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Vulture, Real Simple, and T magazine. The film of her novel Every Secret Thing was produced by Frances McDormand and premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, starring Diane Lane, Elizabeth Banks, and Dakota Fanning.
  
  She is a recipient Mayor's award for literature excellence, Baltimore, 6 Anthony awards, Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, 2 Barry awards, Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, 2 Shamus awards, Private Eye Writers America.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Last Place

    (Tess Monaghan agrees to look into a series of unsolved ho...)

    2002
  • And When She Was Good

    (Based on her acclaimed, multi-award-nominated short story...)

    2012
  • Lady in the Lake

    (The revered New York Times bestselling author returns wit...)

    2019
  • Baltimore Blues

    (Discover the first novel in New York Times bestselling au...)

    1997
  • Nasty Girls

    (Meet some of the most dangerous women master of psycholog...)

    2018
  • Wilde Lake

    (Luisa “Lu” Brant is the newly elected state’s attorney re...)

    2016
  • In a Strange City

    (New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman’s Tess Mo...)

    2001
  • Butchers Hill

    (The notorious vigilante who shot a boy for vandalizing hi...)

    2008
  • Another Thing to Fall

    (When private investigator Tess Monaghan literally runs in...)

    2008
  • What the Dead Know

    (One of the most acclaimed and honored writers in the fiel...)

    2007
  • Scratch a Woman

    (Tess Monaghan as well as three critically lauded stand-al...)

    2009
  • Hardly Knew Her

    (Tess Monaghan as well as three critically lauded stand-al...)

    2009
  • No Good Deeds

    (When Tess Monaghan begins her new gig as a consultant to ...)

    2006
  • Different for Girls

    (In “The Babysitter's Code” the inspiration for her critic...)

    2018
  • After I'm Gone

    (When Felix Brewer meets Bernadette “Bambi” Gottschalk at ...)

    2014
  • In Big Trouble

    (Tess Monaghan has learned the hard way how to survive on ...)

    2010
  • Charm City

    (Tess Monaghan is ecstatic to hear the news that business ...)

    1997
  • Every Secret Thing

    (From critically acclaimed, multiple-award winner Laura Li...)

    2004
  • Hush Hush

    (Tess Monaghan has encountered almost every possible crimi...)

    2015
  • By a Spider's Thread

    (So the successful Baltimore furrier turns to Tess Monagha...)

    2009
  • Life Sentences

    (Author Cassandra Fallows believes she may have found the ...)

    2010
  • Sugar House

    (When Tess Monaghan agrees to talk to Ruthie Dembrow, she ...)

    2009
  • The Girl in the Green Raincoat

    (Tess Monaghan in the strange case of The Girl in the Gree...)

    2011
  • To the Power of Three

    (To the Power of Three is just one of those reasons. Lippm...)

    2012
  • Sunburn

    (One is playing a long game. But which one? They meet at a...)

    2018
  • Baltimore Noir 2006

Religion

Lippman was raised Presbyterian.

Views

Many of Lippman's novels were inspired by newspaper articles. For example, a triple murder in Waco, Texas, which seemed to be a tragic case of mistaken identity (In Big Trouble). A so-called John Doe homicide in Baltimore, where the killers were apprehended and sentenced, but the victim’s identity could never be established (The Sugar House). The long-ago disappearance of Julius Salsbury, a beloved husband, and father who happened to be one of Maryland’s biggest bookies (After I’m Gone).

She also finds inspiration in what she calls the pre-CNN era of her childhood, using regional crimes that the world at large wouldn’t know. These homicides - they were almost always homicides - had a profound impact on her as a girl.

Quotations: "When I began writing crime novels, however, no one in publishing ever talked about ethics. I had to make my own rules."

“Baltimore has an odd geographic distinction. It is one of only two major U.S. cities that lies in no county… Landlocked on every side but one… it cannot expand or annex. Squeezed this way, it is a perfect setting for noir, which depends on an almost Darwinian desperation among its players.”

Membership

Laura is a member of Mystery Writers America and serves as its President since 2010.

Interests

• Writers

  Vladimir Nabokov, Theodore Dreiser, Larry McMurtry

Connections

In 2008 Laura was married to David Simon. She became a mother at 51 years old giving birth to a daughter named Georgia Ray Simon, who was born in 2010.

Father:

Theo Lippman

Mother:

Madeline Lippman

Spouse:

David Simon

Daughter:

Georgia Ray Simon

Friend:

Megan Abbott

References

• Author Laura Lippman's official website