Laura Lippman (born January 31, 1959) is an American journalist and author of over 20 detective fiction novels. Her novels have won multiple awards, including an Agatha Award, seven Anthony Awards, two Barry Awards, an Edgar Award, a Gumshoe Award, a Macavity Award, a Nero Award, two Shamus Awards, and two Strand Critics Award.

Biography

Lippman was born in Atlanta, Georgia and raised in Columbia, Maryland. She is the daughter of Theo Lippman, Jr., a writer at The Baltimore Sun, and Madeline Mabry Lippman, a retired school librarian for the Baltimore City Public School System. Her paternal grandfather was Jewish, and the remainder of her ancestry is Scots-Irish. Lippman was raised Presbyterian. She attended high school in Columbia, Maryland, where she was the captain of the Wilde Lake High School It's Academic team. She also participated in several dramatic productions, including Finian's Rainbow, The Lark, and Barefoot in the Park. She graduated from Wilde Lake High School in 1977. Lippman is a former reporter for the now defunct San Antonio Light and The Baltimore Sun. She is best known for writing a series of novels set in Baltimore and featuring Tess Monaghan, a reporter turned private investigator. Lippman's works have won the Agatha, Anthony, Edgar, Nero, Gumshoe and Shamus awards. What the Dead Know (2007), was the first of her books to make the New York Times Best Seller list, and was shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award. In addition to the Tess Monaghan novels, Lippman's novel Every Secret Thing was adapted into a 2014 movie starring Diane Lane. Her novel Lady in the Lake was adapted into a limited series for Apple TV. Lippman lives in the South Baltimore neighborhood of Federal Hill and frequently writes in the neighborhood coffee shop Spoons. In addition to writing, she teaches at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, just outside Baltimore. In January 2007, Lippman taught at the 3rd Annual Writers in Paradise at Eckerd College. In March 2013, she was the guest of honor at Left Coast Crime. The character Bunk is shown to be reading one of her books, In a Strange City, in episode eight of the first season of The Wire. Lippman appeared in a scene in the first episode of the last season of The Wire as a reporter working in the Baltimore Sun newsroom.

Personal life

In 2006, Lippman married David Simon, another former Baltimore Sun reporter, and creator and an executive producer of the HBO series The Wire, in a ceremony officiated by John Waters. Previously she had been married for seven years, to another man, which ended in a "difficult divorce," and in 2000, she began living with Simon, in a "narrow brick row house", in Baltimore's Federal Hill neighborhood, and dating him. Lippman and Simon have a daughter, who was born in 2010. Lippman and Simon separated in 2020 but neither has since filed for divorce. The two continue to co-parent their daughter.

Awards

What the Dead Know was a New York Times Best Seller. In 2014, Lippman won the inaugural Pinckley Prize for a Distinguished Body of Work.

Publications

Tess Monaghan series

• Baltimore Blues (1997). ISBN 0380788756 • Charm City (1997). ISBN 0380788764 • Butchers Hill (1998). ISBN 0380798468 • In Big Trouble (1999). ISBN 0380798476 • The Sugar House (2000). ISBN 0380978172 • In a Strange City (2001). ISBN 0380978180 • The Last Place (2002). ISBN 0380978199 • By A Spider's Thread (2004). ISBN 0060506695 • No Good Deeds (2006). ISBN 978-0060570729 • Another Thing to Fall (2008). ISBN 978-0061128875 • The Girl in the Green Raincoat (2011). ISBN 978-0061938368 • Hush, Hush (2015). ISBN 978-0062083425

Short stories

Standalone works

Novels

• Every Secret Thing (2004). ISBN 0060506679 • To The Power of Three (2005). ISBN 0060506725 • What the Dead Know (2007). ISBN 978-0061128851 (Little Sister in the UK) • Life Sentences (2009). ISBN 978-0061128899 • I'd Know You Anywhere (2010). ISBN 978-0061706554 (Don't Look Back in the UK) • The Most Dangerous Thing (2011). ISBN 978-0061706516 • And When She Was Good (2012). ISBN 978-0061706875 • After I'm Gone (2014). ISBN 978-0062083395 • Wilde Lake (2016). ISBN 978-0062083456 • Sunburn (2018). ISBN 978-0062389923 • Lady in the Lake (2019). ISBN 978-0062390011 • Dream Girl: A Novel (2021). ISBN 978-0063204652 • Prom Mom (2023). ISBN 9780062998064

Short story collections

Memoir