Winners of the 2014 Pinckley Prizes Announced

Laura Lippman and Gwen Florio are the recipients of the inaugural Pinckley Prizes for Crime Fiction, named to honor the memory of Diana Pinckley, longtime crime fiction columnist for The New Orleans Times-Picayune. The prizes will be presented March 22nd, 2014, at the 28th annual Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival. The presentation will take place at the historic Beauregard-Keyes House at 5 PM. The Prizes are presented by the Women's National Book Association of New Orleans, of which Diana Pinckley was a founding member.

Laura Lippman was selected as the first Pinckley Prize winner for her Distinguished Body of Work. In a statment from the awards committee, "Laura Lippman is one of those writers whose dedication to her home town of Baltimore has captivated American readers. She has created an enduring sleuth in Tess Monaghan, a complex character dealing with the issues that every contemporary woman confronts. And more than that, in her stand-alone works, Lippman has transcended the limits and challenges of genre to become a distinguished writer of social realism. All that, and she has a wicked sense of humor!"

Montana resident Gwen Florio won the Pinckley Prize for a Debut Novel, for her first book, Montana, published by Permanent Press. "Out of a field of excellent debut crime novels, we picked Montana because we completely fell in love with the main character. It's often difficult to pinpoint why someone is lovable. Suffice to say that Gwen Florio's protagonist Lola fully lives on the page, and what is even more compelling about this brave, irascible character is that she continues to live after the book is closed. She's fearless, flawed, intelligent, reckless, and funny, but most of all, she is defined by loyalty to her friend and a relentless pursuit of her killer."