'It's all about what you want to find out'

 

“Allwriting is that structure of revelation. There's something you want to findout. If you know everything up front in the beginning, you really don't need toread further if there's nothing else to find out.” –Walter Mosley
Born on Jan. 12, 1952 Mosley is most widely recognized for his crime fiction.   He has written a series of best-sellinghistorical mysteries featuring the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins, a blackprivate investigator and World War II veteran living in the Watts neighborhoodof Los Angeles.  
Growing up in Los Angeles as an onlychild, he ascribes his writing imagination to "an emptiness in mychildhood that I filled up with fantasies."  It was after moving to New York City andtaking a course in writing at the City College of Harlem – inspired by AliceWalker’s classic novel The Color Purple– that he caught the writing bug. 
 He started writing at age 34 andsaid he has written every day since, His first published novel, Devil in a Blue Dress, was the basis fora 1995 movie starring Denzel Washington. Since then he has penned more than 40 books in a variety of categories,including mystery, science fiction, crime fiction, and non-fiction politics.His work has been translated into 21 languages and in 2023 he was honored by the Crime Writers Association with its Diamond Dagger Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Mosley cites many“inspirational storytellers” as role models, and the most important one, he said,was his father.   “My father always taught by tellingstories about his experiences. His lessons were about morality and art and whatinsects and birds and human beings had in common. He told me what it meant tobe a man and to be a Black man. He taught me about love and responsibility,about beauty, and how to make gumbo.”