Sara Paretsky: Writing in an Age of Silence (2009)

From the Publisher:
A revealing look at the power of speaking out, Writing in an Age of Silence describes Paretski's coming of age in a time of great possibility, during the civil rights movement, the peace movement, and the women's movement. Bestselling crime-writer Sarah Paretsky has won critical acclaim for her V.I. Warshawski novels, centered around one of the first and most popular female investigators in contemporary fiction. In this fascinating and personal account, Paretsky describes a life shaped by the desire to act. From the feminist movement"which triggered her aspirations to write and shaped the character of her female detective"to the Patriot Act and the liberties we have lost, Paretsky describes the struggle of one individual to find a voice. A moving call to action, Writing in an Age of Silence chronicles the social changes that have shaped contemporary America, and mirrors a desire for freedom, both personal and political, that many Americans will relate to today.

Sara Paretsky: Writing in an Age of Silence. Verso, ISBN: 9781844673773 (April, 2009), 160 S., $12.95.

Sara Paretsky: Writing in an Age of Silence (2007)

From the Publisher:
A revelatory exploration of the writer's art, by the bestselling author of the V. I. Warshawski novels.
In this powerful new book, Sara Paretsky explores the traditions of political and literary dissent that have informed her life and work, against the unparalleled repression of free speech and thought in the USA today. In tracing the writer's difficult journey from silence to speech, she turns to her childhood and youth in rural Kansas, and brilliantly evokes Chicago -- the city with which she has become indelibly associated -- from her arrival during the civil-rights struggle in the mid-1960s to her most extraordinary literary creation, the south-side detective V. I. Warshawski. Paretsky traces the emergence of V. I. Warshawski from the shadows of the loner detectives that stalk the mean streets of Dashiell Hammett's and Raymond Chandler's novels, and in the process explores American individualism, the failure of the American dream, and the resulting dystopia. Both memoir and meditation, Writing in an Age of Silence is a compelling exploration of the writer's art and daunting responsibility in the face of the assault on US civil liberties post-9/11.

Sara Paretsky: Writing in an Age of Silence. Verso, ISBN: 1844671224 (May, 2007), 138 S., $22.95.