Celebrate National Library Week at the Port Jefferson Free Library: Meet Local Author Marilyn Levinson

       On Saturday April 20, 2013 at 2pm in the Reading Room the Port Jefferson Free Library will be hosting an extra special National Library Week Celebration Event!

When at the Public Library Association Library Conference last year, librarian Monica Williams made the acquaintance of a group of mystery writers Sisters in Crime http://www.sistersincrime.org/. Sisters in Crime an organization composed of publishers, editors, readers, and librarians who are fans of mysteries and are united by their support of women mystery authors and a. Sisters in Crime is an American Library Association “Library Champion” and offers a “We Love Libraries” award which is a $1,000 grant that is to be used towards the purchase of books. In August 2012 Monica Williams entered the Port Jefferson Free Library as a possible candidate for the award. Word came in January that the Port Jefferson Free Library was the winner. Sisters in Crime has a Long Island Chapter and six authors will be visiting the Library on April 20. Each author will be discussing her own works. All are invited to attend this event. There is no sign up required. We hope you will be able to stay after the presentation and award presentation for author signings. Light refreshments will be served.

Several members of the Long Island Chapter of Sisters in Crime kindly consented to be interviewed via email. Questions were sent  and the authors sent back their replies. Sisters in Crime Long Chapter founder and President Emeritus Marilyn Levinson discusses her work as a writer and some of her inspirations

MW:. Where are you from originally? If not a LI native, how did you end up on Long Island?
I moved to LI from Brooklyn when I was in the ninth grade. I attended Syracuse University, and except for the nine years I lived in Queens and Riverdale, I have always lived on LI--in both Nassau and Suffolk County. Each move has taken me farther east. I am a former Spanish teacher.-          I write mysteries, romantic suspense, and books for kids and YA.

MW:  How did you get interested in mysteries?
I read mysteries when I was young—Nancy Drew, Judy Bolton, Trixie Belden.

MW:  What was the first mystery you ever read? What mysteries did you read before becoming a mystery writer?
No doubt it was The Mystery of the Old Clock, a Nancy Drew mystery. I read many, many mystery writers.

MW: What mystery authors have inspired your own work?
Agatha Christie. In fact, I have a mystery coming out soon called Murder a la Christie. My sleuth, a college professor, leads a Golden Age of Mystery book club. In this, the first in the series, members of the book club are murdered, one by one. Lexie investigates, and reveals the murderer employing Poirot and Miss Marple’s deductive methods.

MW: Please tell the reader about your mysteries
My three mystery series all take place on Long Island. My sleuths are of varying ages. Lydia Krause is a retired widow who lives in an over-55 gated community (A Murderer Among Us, Murder in the Air), Lexie Driscoll is in her forties and lives in a different LI town in each book, and Gabbie Meyerson, an English high school teacher, lives in a cottage about Long Island Sound that she shares with a ghost. (Giving Up the Ghost)

MW: How has living on Long Island impacted your work?
Long Island is the setting for all my mysteries.  While I occasionally refer to real towns and places, you won’t find the towns where my mysteries take place on any map.

MW:  What are your future writing plans?
I plan to write more Twin Lakes mysteries, and a sequel to Giving Up the Ghost.I also intend to write a third Rufus novel, which follows Rufus and the Witch’s  Slave, the YA I’ve just finished writing. The first in the series, Rufus and Magic Run Amok, was a Children’s Choice.

We hope you will be able to join us and meet Marilyn and her fellow Sisters in Crime!