Humanities Washington presents, "A Nicer Kind of Murder: The Evolution of Crime Fiction"
Thu, Mar 16
|Live Virtual Presentation
NCW Libraries is partnering with Write on the River to offer the live, virtual program A Nicer Kind of Murder: The Evolution of Crime Fiction with award-winning author Matthew Sullivan.
Time & Location
Mar 16, 2023, 7:00 PM
Live Virtual Presentation
About the Event
NCW Libraries is partnering with Write on the River to offer the live, virtual Humanities Washington program A Nicer Kind of Murder: The Evolution of Crime Fiction with award-winning author Matthew Sullivan.
This Humanities Washington program will be at 7 p.m., Thursday, March 16, and hosted on the Zoom platform.
Murder isn’t what it used to be. Explore the shifting role of the victim in detective novels, and how that shift reflects broader social changes.
From Poe and Sherlock Homes to British cozies and Hardboiled pulps, author Matthew Sullivan traces the many influences on the postwar and modern eras of the mystery genre and shows how empathy plays a unique role in contemporary crime novels—especially in today’s literary mysteries.
What does the way crime victims are portrayed say about a society’s culture? Join Sullivan to reflect on the special relationship between reading literature and experiencing empathy—on the page and in our daily lives.
Presented by Matthew Sullivan (he/him) the author of the novel Midnight the Bright Ideas Bookstore, which was an IndieNext pick, a Barnes & Noble Discover pick and winter of the Colorado Book Award. His essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times, Daily Beast, Spokesman-Review, and elsewhere. His is currently a writing teacher and is working on a crime novel set in Soap Lake.