The powerful impact of inspirational storytellers

“If you know everything up front in the beginning, you really don't need to read further if there's nothing else to find out.” – Walter Mosley

 

Born in Los Angeles on this date in 1952, Mosley is one of the world’s leading Crime Mystery novelists, especially noted for his best-selling “Easy Rawlins” series.  His hard-boiled black private investigator is featured in 17 books, including two of his most-recent – 2024’s Farewell, Amethystine  and 2025’s Gray Dawn.  Another of Mosley’s books is 2025’s Been Wrong So Long It Feels Right, the latest in his “King Oliver” crime mystery series.

 

Growing up as an only child, Mosley ascribed his writing imagination to "an emptiness in my childhood that I filled up with fantasies."  It was after moving to New York City and taking a course in writing at the City College of Harlem – inspired by Alice Walker’s classic novel The Color Purple – that he caught the writing bug. 

 

He started writing at age 34 and said he has written every day since.   His nearly 60 works span everything from mysteries, science fiction and crime fiction to graphic novels and non-fiction politics, translated into 21 languages.  Among his numerous writing awards are the British Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement and the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.  He’s also written or adapted 9 screenplays, including an episode of this past year’s TV hit series The Lowdown and the movie Devil in a Blue Dress, based on his very first novel.

 

Mosley cites many “inspirational storytellers” as role models, but the most important one, he said, was his father.

  

“My father always taught by telling stories about his experiences. His lessons were about morality and art and what insects and birds and human beings had in common. He told me what it meant to be a man and to be a Black man. He taught me about love and responsibility, about beauty, and how to make gumbo.”