Why Crime Fiction Academy Matters

About a year and a half ago Noreen Tomassi, the Director of Manhattan’s Center For Fiction, came to me with the idea of creating a place for crime fiction. A place where unpublished writers could come to finish the crime novel they’d started but stalled, where writers could be taught by really good published authors, could sit around a table with the best crime fiction writers of our time, people like Lee Child and Elmore Leonard and Laura Lippman, to name just a few, and a place to study and learn from classics in the genre. We did it because no program like it existed. There are writing programs everywhere, but not one that concentrates on crime fiction. In fact, few writing programs offer students even one class in crime fiction (and to those students I say, come take your classes at CFA and we’ll find a way to work it out with your school). … Read more