Jan Burke | |
---|---|
Born | Houston, Texas, U.S. | August 1, 1953
Occupation | Author |
Alma mater | California State University, Long Beach |
Notable awards |
|
Jan Burke (born August 1, 1953) is an American author of novels and short stories. She is a winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel, the Agatha Award for Best Short Story, the Macavity Award, and Ellery Queen Readers Choice Award.
Burke was born August 1, 1953, in Houston, Texas, [1] but has lived in Southern California most of her life. She attended California State University, Long Beach, and graduated with a degree in history. She is a distinguished alumna of CSULB.
She worked as a researcher on an oral history project interviewing "Rosie the Riveters." Later she became the manager of a manufacturing plant for a large corporation.
She completed her first novel, Goodnight, Irene, in the evenings after work. It was sold unagented and unsolicited to Simon & Schuster. She received a surprising boost from a new fan when, during his first White House interview after taking office, President Bill Clinton said he was reading Goodnight, Irene.
Her books have been on bestseller lists of TheNew York Times, USA Today and other publications. They have been published internationally and have been optioned for film and television.
Burke became active in raising awareness of the problems facing crime labs and the need to obtain better funding for forensic science, at one point founding a nonprofit to do so. She has also been an advocate for the improvement of medicolegal death investigation in the U.S. and for requiring the reporting of unidentified remains to NamUs. Working with missing persons advocates, she helped to get legislation passed in New York State, the first state to require Namus reporting by all coroners and medical examiners. Other states have followed this model. She has been a speaker at meetings of the National Institute of Justice, the American Society of Crime Lab Directors, the California Association of Criminalists, the California Association of Crime Lab Directors, and other forensic science organizations. She has served on the honorary board of the California Forensic Science Institute.
Burke has been the Guest of Honor at several mystery fan conventions, including Malice Domestic, Left Coast Crime, and Mayhem in the Midwest.
Illness in her family has taken her away from writing in recent years.
Burke edited the first edition of Breaking and Entering, a Sisters in Crime's guide to getting published. [2] She served as an Associate Editor on Writing Mysteries: A Handbook by the Mystery Writers of America, edited by Sue Grafton. [3] She has served on the national boards of Mystery Writers of America (MWA) and the American Crime Writers League. She is a past president of the Southern California Chapter of Mystery Writers of America.[ citation needed ]
Burke's novel Bloodlines appears in the television series Bones : Season 1, Ep. 17 - "The Skull in the Desert. It is used as a prop on a table at minute 15:05.[ citation needed ]
Burke has received the Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award and Romantic Times 's Career Achievement Award for Contemporary Suspense.[ citation needed ]
Year | Title | Award | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
1993 | Goodnight, Irene | Agatha Award for Best First Novel | Shortlisted | [4] [5] |
1994 | Anthony Award for Best First Novel | Shortlisted | [4] | |
1995 | "Unharmed" | Macavity Award for Best Short Story | Won | [6] [7] |
1997 | Hocus | Agatha Award for Best Novel | Shortlisted | [4] [5] |
1998 | Barry Award for Best Novel | Shortlisted | [4] [8] | |
Macavity Award for Best Novel | Shortlisted | [4] [6] | ||
Liar | Agatha Award for Best Novel | Shortlisted | [4] [5] | |
Macavity Award for Best Novel | Shortlisted | [6] | ||
1999 | "Two Bits" | Anthony Award for Best Short Story | Shortlisted | |
2000 | Bones | Anthony Award for Best Novel | Shortlisted | [4] |
Edgar Award for Best Novel | Won | [4] | ||
"The Man in the Civil Suit" | Agatha Award for Best Short Story | Won | [9] | |
2001 | Macavity Award for Best Short Story | Shortlisted | [6] | |
2002 | "The Abbey Ghosts" | Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Short Story | Shortlisted | [9] |
Macavity Award for Best Short Story | Won | [6] [7] | ||
"Devotion" | Agatha Award for Best Short Story | Shortlisted | [5] | |
Flight | Anthony Award for Best Novel | Shortlisted | [4] | |
Nero Award | Shortlisted | [4] | ||
Writing Mysteries | Agatha Award for Best Non-Fiction | Shortlisted | [5] | |
2003 | Nine | Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel | Shortlisted | [6] |
2006 | Bloodlines | Anthony Award for Best Novel | Shortlisted | [4] |
Barry Award for Best Novel | Shortlisted | [4] [8] | ||
2007 | Kidnapped | Anthony Award for Best Novel | Shortlisted | [4] |
Nero Award | Shortlisted | [4] | ||
2009 | "The Fallen" | Barry Award for Best Short Story | Shortlisted | [10] |
2012 | Disturbance | Left Coast Crime Golden Nugget Award | Shortlisted | [4] [11] |
Laurie R. King is an American author best known for her detective fiction.
The Edgar Allan Poe Awards, popularly called the Edgars, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America, based in New York City. Named after American writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), a pioneer in the genre, the awards honor the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, television, film, and theater published or produced in the previous year.
The Agatha Awards, named for Agatha Christie, are literary awards for mystery and crime writers who write in the traditional mystery subgenre: "books typified by the works of Agatha Christie. .. loosely defined as mysteries that contain no explicit sex, excessive gore or gratuitous violence, and are not classified as 'hard-boiled.'" At an annual convention in Washington, D.C., the Agatha Awards are handed out by Malice Domestic Ltd, in six categories: Best Novel; Best First Mystery; Best Historical Novel; Best Short Story; Best Non-Fiction; Best Children's/Young Adult Mystery. Additionally, in some years the Poirot Award is presented to honor individuals other than writers who have made outstanding contributions to the mystery genre, but it is not an annual award.
Jeff Abbott is an American suspense novelist. He has degrees in History and English from Rice University. He lives in Austin, Texas. Before writing full-time, he was a creative director at an advertising agency. His early novels were traditional detective fiction, but in recent years he has turned to writing thriller fiction. A theme of his work is the idea of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary danger and fighting to return to their normal lives. His novels are published in several countries and have also been bestsellers in the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, Germany, France and Portugal. He is also Creative Director at Springbox, a Prophet company.
Bill Pronzini is an American writer of detective fiction. He is also an active anthologist, having compiled more than 100 collections, most of which focus on mystery, western, and science fiction short stories. Pronzini is known as the creator of the San Francisco-based Nameless Detective, who starred in over 40 books from the early 1970s into the 2000s.
Margaret Maron was an American writer, the author of award-winning mystery novels.
Kenneth Martin Edwards is a British crime novelist, whose work has won multiple awards including lifetime achievement awards for his fiction, non-fiction, short fiction, and scholarship in the UK and the United States. In addition to translations into various European languages, his books have been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese. As a crime fiction critic and historian, and also in his career as a solicitor, he has written non-fiction books and many articles. He is the current President of the Detection Club and in 2020 was awarded the Crime Writers' Association's Diamond Dagger, the highest honour in British crime writing, in recognition of the "sustained excellence" of his work in the genre.
The Macavity Awards, established in 1987, are a group of literary awards presented annually to mystery writers. Nominated and voted upon annually by the members of the Mystery Readers International, the award is named for the "mystery cat" of T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. The award is given in four categories—best novel, best first novel, best nonfiction, and best short story. The Sue Feder Historical Mystery has been given in conjunction with the Macavity Awards.
Dana Cameron is an American archaeologist, and author of award-winning crime fiction and urban fantasy.
Nancy Pickard is an American crime novelist. She has won five Macavity Awards, four Agatha Awards, an Anthony Award, and a Shamus Award. She is the only author to win all four awards. She also served on the board of directors of the Mystery Writers of America. She received a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri and began writing when she was 35 years old.
Louise Penny is a Canadian author of mystery novels set in the Canadian province of Quebec centred on the work of francophone Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec. Penny's first career was as a radio broadcaster for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). After she turned to writing, she won numerous awards for her work, including the Agatha Award for best mystery novel of the year five times, including four consecutive years (2007–2010), and the Anthony Award for best novel of the year five times, including four consecutive years (2010–2013). Her novels have been published in 23 languages.
Jane K. Cleland is a contemporary American author of mystery fiction. She is the author of the Josie Prescott Antiques Mysteries, a traditional mystery series set in New Hampshire and featuring antiques appraiser Josie Prescott, as well as books and articles about the craft of writing. Cleland has been nominated for and has won numerous awards for her writing.
Barbara Ann Neely was an African-American novelist, short story writer and activist who wrote murder mysteries. Her first novel, Blanche on the Lam (1992), introduced the protagonist Blanche White, a middle-aged mother, domestic worker and amateur detective. The Mystery Writers of America named her their 2020 Grand Master winner.
Bouchercon is an annual convention of creators and devotees of mystery and detective fiction. It is named in honour of writer, reviewer, and editor Anthony Boucher; also the inspiration for the Anthony Awards, which have been issued at the convention since 1986. This page details Bouchercon XXV and the 9th Anthony Awards ceremony.
Sharan Newman is an American historian and writer of historical novels. She won the Macavity Award for Best First Mystery in 1994.
G. M. Malliet is an American author of mystery novels and short stories. She is best known as the author of the award-winning Detective Chief Inspector St. Just mysteries and the Rev. Max Tudor mysteries. The first book in her US-based series, Augusta Hawke, appeared in 2022.
Bouchercon is an annual convention of creators and devotees of mystery and detective fiction. It is named in honour of writer, reviewer, and editor Anthony Boucher; also the inspiration for the Anthony Awards, which have been issued at the convention since 1986. This page details Bouchercon XLIV and the 2013 Anthony Awards ceremony.
Paul D. Marks was an American novelist and short story writer. His novel White Heat, a mystery-thriller set during the Rodney King riots of 1992, won the first Shamus Award for Independent Private Eye Novel from the Private Eye Writers of America.
The Raven Award is an award given annually by the Mystery Writers of America as part of the Edgar Awards. The Raven Award is given from time to time to non-writers and institutions who have made significant professional contributions to our genre or to MWA. The Board may choose not to award a Raven in any given year.
Barb Goffman is an author of short mystery stories and freelance crime-fiction editor. Her writing has received and been nominated for multiple awards, including winning the Agatha Award and Anthony Award.