Dear Librarian,

In this month’s newsletter, we highlight the relationship between librarians and authors with a special essay by Mia Manasala. Mia’s been getting a lot of buzz for her new own voices cozy mystery, Arsenic and Adobo. She works in an Illinois library and has written a special essay just for our newsletter.

Libraries and Authors

By Mia Manansala

I believe one of the best ways to improve your writing is 1) read widely and 2) read deeply in your chosen genre/subgenre. I have a very limited budget, so going to the library to check out dozens of mysteries and familiarize myself with the genre was (and still is) hugely important to my process. My mom works at the Harold Washington Library in downtown Chicago, which is less than ten minutes away from my previous job. So early in my writing journey, my routine was to visit her, check out a few books (for fun and research), and then settle in a quiet nook or in the library’s Winter Garden to get some reading/writing done. This was in the before times, of course, and I dearly miss it. I currently work at the Forest Park Public Library, which is a great place, but the Harold Washington Library is special to me. It’s such a beautiful, inspirational space, and I can’t wait to return to it in the future.  

Bio: Mia P. Manansala (she/her) is a certified book coach and the author of ARSENIC AND ADOBO (Berkley May 4, 2021), the first in the Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mystery series. She uses humor (and murder) to explore aspects of the Filipino diaspora, queerness, and her millennial love for pop culture. She is the winner of the 2018 Hugh Holton Award, the 2018 Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award, the 2017 William F. Deeck - Malice Domestic Grant for Unpublished Writers, and the 2016 Mystery Writers of America/Helen McCloy Scholarship. She's also a 2017 Pitch Wars alum and 2018-2020 mentor.  

Find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram: @MPMtheWriter  

Or check out her website: www.miapmanansala.com  

Headshot credit: Jamilla Yipp Photography

Sisters in Crime $500 Grant for Libraries: Flossmoor Public Library!

By Susan Hammerman

The June We Love Libraries winner is the Flossmoor Public Library in Flossmoor, Illinois. The $500 grant will be used to expand the library’s Playaway collection.

It was clear from the WLL application that the librarians at the Flossmoor Public Library strive to serve and to inspire everyone in their community. They certainly inspired me. Per the application, “[The Flossmoor Public Library] celebrated National Women's History Month in March 2021 with a period products drive. Our community donated a total of 254 products (not all products seen in picture), which we gave to the South Suburban Family Shelter. We included books by three female authors from Illinois in our photo to celebrate talented women authors in our state as well.”

Does your library need new materials? Do you have a great programming idea? Apply for the We Love Libraries award! Find grant details and the brief grant application on our website. A WLL winner of $500 is selected every other month.

Susan Hammerman, a former rare book librarian, is the coordinator of the We Love Libraries program. Susan writes crime and neo-noir short stories. Her most recent story, “Flying Lizards Jumping Rainbows,” will be published in the June issue of Blood and Bourbon Magazine. 

Photo caption: Patron Services Assistant, Juliza Cazares on the left, and Youth Services Manager, Anna Pauls on the right, are pictured with donations the library collected for a local family shelter and books by Sisters in Crime member authors. The books are: The Body in the Woods and The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die by April Henry; The Testing and Need by Joelle Charbonneau; and Dead Land and Brush Back by Sara Paretsky.

Thank you for all you do for your communities.

Happy reading,

Shari Randall

Sisters in Crime Library Liaison

Author of the Agatha Award-winning Lobster Shack Mystery series

Sisters in Crime hosts LIVE webinars each month. Webinars last 60-90 minutes depending on the topic and the audience questions! These webinars are open to all.

We've started to collect information about our members books. We've put it in a spreadsheet that we'll update every month, and send as part of this newsletter. This is a new feature for our members, so the list will expand. But in the meantime, we hope you find this list helpful.

Looking for diverse books? For many years, SINC has curated Frankie’s List, an extensive list of crime novels by people of color and other marginalized groups. Frankie Y. Bailey, building on work by the late Eleanor Taylor Bland, began to compile a list of published Black crime writers over a decade ago. Frankie has expanded the list to include other WOC and LGBTQ+ authors. Here’s a link: https://www.sistersincrime.org/page/FrankiesList

Sisters in Crime is the premier crime writing association focused on equity and inclusion in our community and in publishing. Our 4,500+ members enjoy access to tools to help them learn, grow, improve, thrive, and reinvent if necessary. They also gain a community of supportive fellow writers and readers, both peers to share the peaks and valleys of writing, and mentors to model the way forward.