Hello.

Welcome to another episode of Inside the Cover.

I am your host, Ted Ayres, and as always, it is an honor and privilege for me to be able to join you this evening.

Wherever it is you're watching PBS Kansas, and I want to thank you for watching and supporting our station the home of seriously good TV.

Tonight, as we sometimes do, I want to feature one of my all tim favorite authors, Walter Mosley.

Not only is he a talented, successful, and award winning writer, he is a very interesting man.

It is now time to go inside the cover.

Mr. Mosley is an American novelist most widely recognized for his crime fiction.

He was born in Los Angeles on January 12th, 1952.

His mother was Jewish.

Her ancestors had immigrated from Russia and she worked as a personnel clerk.

His father was an African American from Louisiana who was a supervising custodia at a Los Angeles public school.

His parents tried to marry in 1951, and while the union was legal in California, where they were living, no one would give them a marriage license.

Mosley describes his father as a deep thinker and storyteller, ‘a black Socrates, his mother encouraged him to read European classics from Dickens to Zola to Camus.

He personally favors Langston Hughes and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

He was largely raised in a nonpolitical family culture, although there were racial conflicts flaring throughout L.A. at the time.

He later became mor highly politicized and outspoken about racial inequalities in the U.S., which are a context of much of his fiction.

While taking a writing course at City College in Harlem.

Edna O'Brien, one of his tutors there, became a mentor and encouraged him saying, ‘Youre black, Jewish, with a poor upbringing.

There are riches therein.

Mosley started writing at 34 and has penned more than 40 books.

His work has been translated into 21 languages.

In 2020, Mosley receive a National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, making him the first black man to receive the honor.

Mosley has a number of protagonists, including his most famous and my favorite, Ezekiel Porterhouse ‘Easy Rawlins.

There are 16 titles in the Rawlins series, and I've read ten of them as you can see on your screen.

Devil in a Blue Dress wa the first book I read in 1993, and I read it because Marsh told me that President Clinton had publicized that Mosle was one of his favorite authors.

I think I will now let Mosley's own words finish our show.

Relativ to his previously noted tendency to write about racial inequality.

Note the following quote ‘Because as fancy as the Brown Derb might have been, it wasn't going to give you the kind of freedom that a black club offered, black people know how to be free.

People who had been denied for as many centuries, as we had, knew how to let their hair down and danced like there was no tomorrow.

Finally, ‘You know, when you get to be my age, everybody is dying, dying or dead.

If I walk out that door wearing jeans and with bus money in my pocket, it means I'm going to the hospital to visit a friend.

If I'm in a suit, it means a funeral.

I encourage you to do yoursel a favor and read Walter Mosley.

Social commentary.

Interesting continuing characters.

Delightful phrasing and imagery.

Honest insights into life in Los Angeles and America for blacks and whites, and multiple crimes to be solved.

Start with the first Rawlins book, devil in a Blue Dress, or start with the newest book in the series, Farewell, Amethystine, to learn more about L.A.s Premiere Black Detective.

Personally I'm going to complete the series and look at some of Mosley's other protagonists.

Good night.

Thanks for being with us and happy reading.