Margaret Maron Honored

Author Margaret Maron speaking at UNCG

We are delighted to announce this honor for Margaret Maron, who attended UNCG and whose papers are on long-term loan to our University Libraries. 

 

Mystery Writers of America Announces Ken Follett & Margaret Maron
as their 2013 Grand Masters
Plus Raven and Ellery Queen Awards
 

 
December 3, 2012 – New York, NY – Ken Follett and Margaret Maron have been chosen as this year’s Grand Masters by Mystery Writers of America (MWA). MWA's Grand Master Award represents the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing and was established to acknowledge important contributions to this genre, as well as a body of work that is both significant and of consistent high quality. Mr. Follett and Ms. Maron will be presented with their awards at the Edgar Awards Banquet, which will be held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City on Thursday, May 2, 2013.

Margaret Maron is the author of twenty-six novels and two short story collections. Her first mystery, One Coffee With, was published in 1981, and was the beginning of her Sigrid Harald series featuring a New York City police officer. But it wasn’t until 1992, and a fictional return to her North Carolina roots, with Bootlegger’s Daughter (the first of the Deborah Knott series), that Maron was awarded an Edgar, Agatha, Anthony and Macavity award. Maron’s works are on the reading lists of courses in contemporary Southern literature and have been translated into 16 languages. She has served as president of Sisters in Crime, the American Crime Writers League, and Mystery Writers of America. She and her husband live on her family's century-old farm a few miles southeast of Raleigh, which inspired the setting for Bootlegger's Daughter.

On learning she was a Grand Master, Maron said, “Me? It still hasn’t fully sunk in. I keep remembering my first MWA dinner when I was half-afraid that I would be asked to leave because I only had a few short stories and a half-published book to my name, so how could I possibly belong there with those luminaries?  Grand Master?  Wow!”

Previous Grand Masters include Martha Grimes, Sara Paretsky, Dorothy Gilman, James Lee Burke, Sue Grafton, Bill Pronzini, Stephen King, Marcia Muller, Dick Francis, Mary Higgins Clark, Lawrence Block, P.D. James, Ellery Queen, Daphne du Maurier, Alfred Hitchcock, Graham Greene, and Agatha Christie.

MWA is the premier organization for mystery writers, professionals allied to the crime-writing field, aspiring crime writers, and those who are devoted to the genre. The organization encompasses more than 3,000 members including authors of fiction and non-fiction books, screen and television writers, as well as publishers, editors, and literary agents. For more information on Mystery Writers of America, please visit the website: www.mysterywriters.org
 

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