Crime Fiction Down South

Thomas Mullen, Attica Locke, S.A. Cosby

Sponsored by the DeKalb Library Foundation

Award-winning novelists, Thomas Mullen, Attica Locke, and S. A. Cosby, talk about their hard-hitting crime novels set in Georgia, Texas, and Virginia. Mullen’s novel Lightning Men explores race, law enforcement, and justice in mid-century Atlanta. Locke’s Heaven, My Home, a sequel to her earlier book Bluebird, Bluebird, chronicles a Texas Ranger’s search for a missing child, and grapples with American nostalgia and white supremacism. S. A. Cosby’s Blacktop Wasteland follows small-town business owner who was once the best getaway-car driver east of the Mississippi and is driven by circumstance to try one last heist. These authors will discuss what they love about crime fiction, what it tells us about our society, and where it goes from here.

About the Authors:

Thomas Mullen is the author of Darktown, an NPR Best Book of the Year, which has been shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Southern Book Prize, the Indies Choice Book Award, and has been nominated for two CWA Dagger Awards; The Last Town on Earth, which was named Best Debut Novel of 2006 by USA Today and was awarded the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for excellence in historical fiction; The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers; and The Revisionists. His 2017 novel, Lightning Men, which follows the characters from Darktown two years later, was named one of the Top 10 Crime Novels of 2017 by The New York Times Book Review. His works have been named to Year’s Best lists by The Chicago Tribune, USA Today, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Kirkus Reviews, The Onion’s A/V Club, The San Diego Union-Times, Paste Magazine, The Cleveland Plain-Dealer, and Amazon. His stories and essays have been published in Grantland, Paste, The Huffington Post, and Atlanta Magazine. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and sons.

Attica Locke’s latest novel Heaven, My Home is the sequel to Edgar Award-winning Bluebird, Bluebird. Her third novel Pleasantville was the winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was also long-listed for the Bailey’s Prize for Women’s Fiction. The Cutting Season was the winner of the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. Her first novel Black Water Rising was nominated for an Edgar Award, an NAACP Image Award, as well as a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was short-listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. A former fellow at the Sundance Institute’s Feature Filmmaker’s Lab, Locke works as a screenwriter as well. Most recently, she was a writer and producer on Netflix’s When They See Us and also the upcoming Hulu adaptation of Little Fires Everywhere. A native of Houston, Texas, Attica lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and daughter.

Shawn A. Cosby is a writer from Southeastern Virginia. His short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines. His short story “The Grass Beneath My Feet” won the Anthony award for best short story in 2019. His writing is influenced by his experience as a bouncer, construction worker, retail manager, and for six hours, a mascot for a major fast food chain inside the world’s hottest costume. When he isn’t crafting tales of murder and mayhem he assists the dedicated staff at J.K. Redmind Funeral home as a mortician’s assistant. He is an avid hiker and is also known as one hell of a chess player.

About the Moderators:

Carl Suddler is an Assistant Professor of History at Emory University. His research interests lie at the intersections of youth, race, and crime in the United States. Suddler’s first book, Presumed Criminal: Black Youth and the Justice System in Postwar New York, was published in 2019.

Kareem Joseph is a doctoral student and Centennial Scholar at Emory University. His broader interests include the intersections of race, gender, violence, class, and criminality in African American literature, namely crime fiction. The central focus of his research seeks to unsettle notions of crime and Black criminality in African American crime and detective fiction, as well as popular discourse, by tracking genealogies of U.S. anti-Black violence.

Sponsored by The DeKalb Library Foundation, whose mission is to provide support for DeKalb County Public Library beyond public funding and to enrich the lives of DeKalb County citizens through educational, cultural and literary programs and services.

These books are available through local, indie bookseller

Charis Books & More

Lighting Men and Darktown by Thomas Mullen

Heaven, My Home and Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke

Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby

Presumed Criminal: Black Youth and the Justice System in Postwar New York by Carl Sudder

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