Meet the Author – Margaret Maron
Margaret Maron received an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2010. Besides the Deborah Knott series, she is the author of the Lt. Sigrid Harald mystery series, which is set in New York City. She is also the author of many short stories, and founder and past president of Sisters in Crime. Today she lives in North Carolina on land that has been in her family for 100 years. It is very much like her fictional Colleton County.
In addition to winning all the major awards for mystery novels, Maron received the Sir Walter Raleigh Award from the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association in 2004 for Last Lessons of Summer. She was presented with the Order of the Long Leaf Pine by the governor in 2006. In 2008, she won the North Carolina Award, the highest award the state can bestow. It cited her “for introducing readers from Prague to Bangkok to Tar Heel Places and serving through her prose as an unofficial ambassador for North Carolina.”
Durham County Library is honored to have Margaret Maron as the featured author for Durham Reads Together 2012.
Durham County Library asked Margaret Maron a few questions about herself. Here’s what she has to say:
Q: How do you feel about being selected as the author for Durham Reads Together 2012?
A: Enormously honored and more than a little overwhelmed.
Q: What book is on your bedside table?
A: Right this minute? Despicable Species by Janet Lembke, a rhyming dictionary, and Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson. I also have a couple of books on my computer sent by editors who would like cover quotes for their authors.
Q: Were there any bootleggers in your extended family?
A: In the community, but not in my family.
Q: Would you consider setting one of the Deborah Knott’s cases in Durham?
A: I never rule out a location if a good plot requires it.
Q: Did you always plan to have your two sleuths get together to work on a case together?
A: No, but then so much of what Judge Deborah Knott decides to do has come as a surprise. I've learned to just go with the flow.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: My next book, due out in November, is The Buzzard Table, which brings NYPD homicide detective Sigrid Harald down to North Carolina. I've just begun another book that's too amorphous at the moment to discuss except that it will take place in Deborah Knott's judicial district.
Q: Do you have any favorite library memories?
A: Too many good memories to name a single one, beginning when I was three or four and sitting on one of those wee little chairs to hear a librarian read Horton Hatches the Egg. Bliss! The first time I found my name in the card catalog at the New York Public Library was another memorable moment. And I'll never forget how rich I felt whenever I left the bookmobile with an armload of books that included a new-to-me Nancy Drew adventure. What a wonderfully civilized institution free public libraries are.
