Claflin Lyceum Series to Feature Award Winning Author Walter Mosley on April 12
Apr 07, 2017
Renowned writer Walter Mosley will be the guest lecturer for Claflin University's Lyceum Series on Wednesday, April 12 at 7 p.m. in the Grace Thomas Kennedy Auditorium. Admission is free and the public is invited. The Lyceum Series comprises guest lecturers, performers and events that stimulate and reinforce the cultural and intellectual environment of the campus community.
Mosley is most widely recognized for his crime fiction. He has written a series of best-selling historical mysteries featuring the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins, a black private investigator and World War II veteran living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles -- they are perhaps his most popular works.
Mosley was born in California. After dropping out of Goddard College, a liberal arts college in Plainfield, Vermont, he returned to college and earned a political science degree at Johnson State College in Johnson, VT. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the City College of New York. Mosley has written in a variety of fiction categories, including mystery and afrofuturist science fiction, as well as non-fiction politics. His work has been translated into 21 languages. Mosley made publishing history in 1997 by foregoing an advance to give the manuscript of Gone Fishin' to a small, independent publisher, Black Classic Press in Baltimore, run by former Black Panther Paul Coates.
His first published book, Devil in a Blue Dress, was the basis of a 1995 movie starring Denzel Washington. The world premiere of his first play, The Fall of Heaven was staged at the Playhouse in the Park in Cincinnati, Ohio, in January, 2010.
Mosley's honors and awards include three NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Literary Works in Fiction ( 2014, 2009, 2007); named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America (2016); first recipient of the Carl Brandon Society Parallax Award (2006); and Grammy Award for Best Album Notes for Richard Pryor's ... And It's Deep, Too (2001).
For more information about Claflin's Lyceum Series, contact Dr. Peggy Stevenson Ratliff, professor of English at 803-535-5233 or email to pratliff@claflin.edu.