Property Spotlight/ Crime At The Literary Seminar

 

By Joanna Brady Schmida

 

Ah, crime. It’s something we’re all afraid of, yet drawn to like the proverbial moth to a flame. As fiction, it’s probably the most popular category in literature, read by teenagers, grandparents and everyone in between.

 

 

I heard a lot about crime this past week. There are a lot of things I love about Key West, but I think my very favorite thing is the Literary Seminar, an annual event that happens every January. This past week I cleared my desk and ignored emails, let my husband feed the cat, did no exercise, let the laundry pile up and forgot to eat. This went on for three days while I wore out a pretty good pair of eyes attending the 32nd annual Key West Literary Seminar at the San Carlos Institute, listening to people in a darkened theater talk about one of our favorite subjects, crime. Or more specifically, crime writing.

 

 

I’d forgotten how intense three days, with sessions both all morning and all afternoon, can be. It’s like being back at college, except there are no exams, just sheer pleasure, done for no other reason than to listen with baited breath as a group of best-selling writers utter their words of wisdom for groupies like myself.

 

 

The theme this year was “The Dark Side,” exploring mystery, crime and the literary thriller and taking the stage was an assembly of some brilliant and talented crime writers. The authors, who are unpaid, bore their private souls singly with the audience or sat in on panels to discuss the broad themes that sweep through their work. Most of them were really clever and witty, as well as being insightful.

 

 

A lot of people in the audience were journalists who aspire to cross the line into fiction. Many were writers who had already waded into the fictional scene and many who would like to. A lot were simply devoted readers who cared enough about their favorite writers to attend, meet the writers and chat with them. The length of line-ups for book signings was indicative of how popular this seminar’s writers are.

 

 

I attended the second session, which headlined Elizabeth George, Michael Connelly and Lee Child. There were also Florida writer James Hall, Malla Nunn of South Africa, Irish author John Banville, Tess Gerritsen, Percival Everett, Alafair Burke, Michael Kortya, William Kent Krueger, Lisa Unger, Lyndsay Fay, and Sara Gran. Nearly all of them, authors of all ages, are best-selling writers of an astonishing numbers of books, most of them in a series with a popular recurring main character.

 

 

As a special treat, the inimitable Billy Collins read his poetry at both sessions, and while not about crime, he showed us a lighter side by keeping us all laughing.

 

 

I envy those who could afford the time and stamina to attend both sessions this year. Had I done that, I would also have enjoyed writers like Gillian Flynn, and Carl Hiaasen, Sarah Peretsky, Alexander McCall Smith, Val McDermid, John Sandford, Megan Abbott, Joyce Carol Oates, Scott Turow, and several others but alas, one must make choices. Eventually, you do have to do the laundry, feed the cat and get back to the gym.

 

 

“How the Light Gets In: Literature of the Spirit” is the theme for the 33rd Key West Seminar. Tickets are already being sold. For more information go to http://www.kwls.org/

 

 

(Joanna Brady Schmida is a Key West writer. Writing as Joanna Brady, she is author of The Woman at the Light, published by St. Martin’s Press, July, 2012, available at Key West Island Books, and the bookstores at the Custom House and the Lighthouse Museum.)

 

 

(Ed note: I tried but cannot reformat to single-spaced lines.)

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