Dear Librarian,

Savvy authors know that librarians are researchers par excellence and a researching writer’s best friend. In this month’s newsletter, we highlight the relationship between librarians and authors with a special essay by Ellen Byron. Byron, an award winning mystery and television writer, has penned an ode to her favorite librarian.

An Ode to Emily 

by Ellen Byron

In my view, all librarians are A-list stars. But there’s one star who shines particularly bright in my personal firmament – Emily Aaronson, the adult librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library’s Studio City Branch, my local library.

I donate a copy of every book I write to the Studio City library branch, and that’s how I first got to know Emily. She invited me to do a mystery panel, which was followed by other panels and mystery trivia nights. Emily has also helped me with research, providing invaluable answers to my many questions, always with her perpetually sunny disposition.

You can keep your personal trainers, masseuses, and stylists. For me, there’s nothing better than having my own personal librarian. Or at least feeling like I do. I’m sure A-list library star Emily makes every Studio City patron feel she is theirs and theirs alone.

Ellen Byron is the Agatha Award-winning author of the Cajun Country Mysteries. The USA Today bestselling series has also won multiple Best Humorous Mystery Lefty awards from the Left Coast Crime conference. She also writes The Catering Hall Mysteries (under the pen name Maria DiRico), which launched with Here Comes the Body.

Ellen’s TV credits include Wings, Just Shoot Me, and Fairly OddParents. She’s written over 200 national magazine articles, and her published plays include the award-winning Graceland. She also worked as a cater-waiter for the legendary Martha Stewart, a credit she never tires of sharing. A native New Yorker who attended Tulane University, Ellen lives in Los Angeles with her husband, daughter, and rescue chi mix, Pogo. She still misses her hometown - and still drives like a New York cabbie.

Focus On Libraries:

The Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois

By Madeline Crispell

The Newberry Library and its Smith Center for the History of Cartography are planning their largest map-centric exhibition in years. Crossings, opening in 2022, will feature a wide range of material– from maps and guidebooks to travel ephemera like postcards. Crossings uses the broadest possible definition of “traveler” and is focused on four historic corridors of travel and migration and the human experiences of those who traversed them.

The exhibition is physically and thematically organized geographically. The gallery space will become the continental United States with objects arranged as if the exhibition hall were a map. The four crossings that make up the exhibition can be followed in any direction and visitors are encouraged to break away from expected east to west routes. The Northern Crossing spans the area from New York City to Seattle, the Middle Crossing spans the Chesapeake Bay area to San Francisco, the Southern Crossing spans Miami to Los Angeles, and finally the Mississippi River is the sole North/South crossing. Each can be thought of more as a “braid” of routes than as a straight line from city to city. For example, the Northern Crossing encompasses the entire Great Lakes region rather than only the northernmost areas to adhere more closely to how historic travelers would have seen the mobility made possible by the lakes. While the exhibition is focused on the United States, points on the crossings will look outward, as in the case of Miami, featured for its role as an entry point for many arriving in the United States from Latin America and the Caribbean.

Where possible, the exhibition will highlight specific people who traveled the crossings. The exhibit will feature annotated guidebooks and travel diaries to foreground the words of historic travelers. An exhibition publication will allow visitors to delve even more deeply into this type of archival material. Crossings will be on view in the Trienen Gallery at the Newberry from February 25, 2022 through June 18, 2022. More information will be available on the Newberry’s website closer to the opening.

Madeline Crispell is the Program Coordinator for Fellowships and the Smith Center for the History of Cartography at the Newberry Library. She holds an MA in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture from the Bard Graduate Center in New York, where she focused on material culture and immigration history. 

We Love Libraries Grants

Six times a year, Sisters in Crime distributes a $500 Doris Ann Norris We Love Libraries Grant. Since it’s run as a lottery, it’s the easiest grant you’ll never write! Apply here: https://www.sistersincrime.org/page/WeLoveLibraries

Thank you for all you do for your communities.

Happy reading,

Shari

Former librarian Shari Randall is the Sisters in Crime Library Liaison and the author of the Agatha Award-winning Lobster Shack Mystery series. As Meri Allen, she writes the new Ice Cream Shop Mystery series. The first in series, THE ROCKY ROAD TO RUIN, debuts July 27.

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.

Here's a spreadsheet with our members' 2021 books. This month's releases are in a separate worksheet. Sort the spreadsheet by author name, location, title, or release date.

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.