Sara paretsky biography

Sara Paretsky grew up in eastern Kansas, where she attended a small country school. The publishing bug bit Paretsky early -- at age 11, her first published story appeared in the magazine TheAmerican Girl. It was about children surviving a Kansas tornado. She attended the University of Kansas for her undergraduate degree, but after spending a summer in Chicago doing community service work,she fell in love with the Windy City and decided after college to make the move permanent.

Paretsky eventually earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago but had a hard time finding ajob as an academic, so she returned to school for an M.B.A., after which she started working full-time in marketing. (In order to complete her first three novels, she juggled family and job withwriting at night.) An avid reader, Paretsky has always been a fan of detective fiction, but noticed a lack of intelligent, likable female protagonists in the genre. Thus, with the inspiring city ofChicago as the background, her signature character, V. I. Warshawski, was born.

Readers and critics have responded with appreciation for Paretsky's confident, modern, female detective. Unlike otherheroines, V. I. refuses to be categorized by her sexuality. Despite the patriarchy she confronts on every case, she's a single woman in total control.

Paretsky says of V.I., " I started agingV.I. because although she is a fictional character, she is grounded in historical events: she came of age during the Civil Rights movement and the anti-War movement. Her mother was a refugee fromFascist Italy.

And her cases are all based on real events. Who she is depends on her being born in the Fifties. Now, of course, I have this dilemma of how to let her get older while still continuingto be an effective detective. I haven't quite figured that out yet."

Beyond her successful series, Paretsky has proven her range of talent with short stories (1995's Windy City Blues) and...