What the Future Holds: In Conversation with Walter Mosley

Date
Tue May 15th 2018, 7:00 - 8:30pm
Event Sponsor
McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, Continuing Studies, Stanford Storytelling Project , Creative Writing Program
Location
CEMEX Auditorium
What the Future Holds: In Conversation with Walter Mosley

What the Future Holds: In Conversation with Walter Mosley

Novelist and social commentator Walter Mosley is best known for his crime fiction, and his indelible narrator, Easy Rawlins. But Mosley, a frequent social commentator and wide-ranging writer, is also a serious practitioner of Science Fiction. He employs the form not just to contemplate the culture as it was, but to envision the trends that might point to our future. These envisionings are rarely optimistic, but always prescient. Over the course of a stunning series of novels and short stories--from "Blue Light" in 1998 to the Crosstown to Oblivion series to his most recent "Inside a Silver Box"--Mosley takes up genetic engineering, environmental fallout, societal collapse, and the tenaciousness of racial divisions in American life.

After a short reading by Mosley, he will be in conversation with Mia Birdsong, community activist and director of Family Story. Topics will include Mosley's views on writing, the state of the union, and his approaches for imagining the future. A Q&A will follow the conversation and books will be available for purchase and signing.  

This event is part of the Technology & Human Values series and the Frankenstein @ 200 Initiative. 

MOSLEY is one of the most powerful and prolific writers working in any genre today. He is the author of more than 40 books, ranging from the crime novel to literary fiction, nonfiction, political essay, young adult, and science fiction. The New York Review of Books called him "a literary master as well as a master of mystery," and The Boston Globe declared him “one of the nation's finest writers." 

Mosley’s fiction tracks the African American experience from the migration from the Deep South to post-Obama election-era New York City. His characters are the sorts of "fully formed, complex black men who have been absent from much of contemporary literature,” he says.

Several of Mosley's books have been adapted for film and television, with new projects in development at FX, Cinemax, and HBO. To adapt his works for television and feature films, Mosley teamed up with producer Diane Houslin to create his own production house, Best of Brooklyn Filmhouse.  With over a dozen entries, his Easy Rawlins detective series began with Devil in a Blue Dress, which was made into a feature film starring Denzel Washington. His latest Rawlins mystery, Charcoal Joe, was released in June 2016. 

His upcoming novel, Down the River Unto the Sea, centers on a former New York City police detective turned Brooklyn PI, and is slated for a February 2018 release.

The first African-American to serve on the board of directors of the National Book Awards, Mosley has received an O’Henry Award, The Sundance Risktaker Award, a Grammy, and two NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Literary Work. In 2016, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Annual Edgar Awards and was named the first African-American “Grand Master” by the Mystery Writers of America.

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