Walter Mosley
Walter Mosley
Walter Ellis Mosleyis an American novelist, 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth12 January 1952
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I'm just a survivor from the train wreck of the modern world.
At one time if you were a black writer you had to be one of the best writers in the world to be published. You had to be great. Now you can be good. Mediocre. And that's good.
The job of the writer is to take a close and uncomfortable look at the world they inhabit, the world we all inhabit, and the job of the novel is to make the corpse stink.
I think that computer programming shows in my writing. Often when I write about computer programmers I'll write about the way that they see the world and they structure the world.
Octavia Butler has been a beacon for thousands of us. This award will continue her legacy making sure that others will find their way to harbor.
What I want to do is give people who've been there a chance to recreate that world and those who've haven't been there a chance to create it, ... For a lot of people, it's an alien land, the world of black Los Angeles.
The reason I'm a writer is because I'm a writer. The reason I'm going through all these different genres is I'm trying to lay out a landscape for black male heroes.
It's 1966, Easy has to come to San Francisco,
It's a black erotic novel 25 percent of it is explicit sex,
Until very recently, ... publishers weren't aware of the fact that African-Americans do so much reading.
My father's life was so decimated by his earliest experiences. His mother died when he was 7 years old, which he always said was the worst experience in his life. When he was 8, his father disappeared and he was on his own from the age of 8.
When I went to school, there were no Black philosophers, at least none that I was aware of, who were recognized by Western universities.
When I turned 59, I looked at that as the first day of my 60th year, so I've been 60 for the last 365 days, in my opinion. So I've been thinking all this year, I'm 60 - this is the time when I need to get some stuff done.
I've written a lot of really good books. Now we'll see if I can write any more good books. I mean there's a chance I won't, but I'm going to try.