“When I was a boy in Kansas, my mother had a boarding house. There were three women school teachers living in the house. I was four years old, and they were nice to me; I liked them. I saw their attempts, and, even as a child, I sensed every woman’s…

One hundred thirteen years ago, first cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee were born nine months and five blocks apart in Brooklyn, New York. As young men, Dannay worked as an art director and Lee was a press agent. In 1928, the pair entered a writing contest for best first…

The Postman Always Rings Twice shocked readers in the 1930s with its language of sex and violence. James M. Cain’s noir novel tells the story of Frank and Cora, conniving lovers who plot to murder her husband. …

Laurie Colwin, best remembered for her food essays in Gourmet magazine, was a fiction writer and passionate home cook. Since her sudden passing at age 48 in 1992, Colwin’s work has attracted legions of loyal fans. All ten of her books — five novels, three short-story collections, and two food…

I like to read obits. Like a good biography, obituaries expand my view of the world and introduce me to people I otherwise would never get to know. These life stories can be pleasantly surprising, even educational. Betty Marcus passed away last month at age ninety-four. According to her obituary…

Before he invented tough-talking private eye Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler was a freelance journalist and government worker. He picked apricots, strung tennis rackets, and worked his way up from junior accountant to oil company executive. When the Great Depression put him out of work, he taught himself to write detective…

In the late 1940s, Alice Steinbach was a student in Miss Dennis’s ninth grade creative writing class at Western High School, in Baltimore. Alice Steinbach became a writer and journalist, and in 1996, she published her first book, The Miss Dennis School of Writing and Other Lessons from A Woman’s…

A New York playwright shares insights from his writing life. Neil Simon began writing his first play in 1957, when he was thirty years old. A writer for television comedy shows such as Your Show of Shows with Sid Caesar and Sgt. Bilko Show with Phil Silvers, Simon was determined…

“Shoo her in, darling,” said Spade. “Shoo her in.” The Maltese Falcon The name Dashiell is actually pronounced da-sheel. de Chiel, deShiel, Da Shiel, Dashiell. The spelling evolved as his maternal ancestors migrated from France to Scotland to Colonial Virginia to Maryland. Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born in St. Mary’s…