From caveman kid writer to award-winning novelist, Laura Lippman shares journey in Hoover

Laura Lippman always wanted to be a novelist and wrote her first novel when she was 5 years old.

“I didn’t know how to read or write, but I didn’t know why that should hold me back,” the New York Times bestselling author told an audience of 250 people at the Hoover Public Library’s Southern Voices Festival Friday night.

Lippman, a renowned crime and mystery writer, was the festival’s headline author, speaking in advance of nine other writers who will share their stories during an authors conference Saturday.

She read from one of her essays Friday night in the Hoover Library Theatre and shared about her journey from being a kid with a dream to a journalist and finally a full-time novelist with more than 20 novels and multiple awards under her belt.

That first novel, though, is very memorable to her. Her father was a journalist, so she took his portable typewriter out and pounded the keys randomly. She figured out how to type one word — pig — so she sprinkled it into the copy frequently.

She also drew pictures of cavemen and dinasours and said the novel was written in caveman language.

“My mother actually saved that book, and I have it in a boxed frame above my desk to this day,” Lippman said.

In addition to her many novels, Lippman has written multiple short stories, several of which were included in “The Best American Mystery Stories,” and in May plans to release her first collection of essays, titled “My Life as a Villainess.”

While Lippman dreamed of being a novelist, she figured the best way to get started making a living as a writer was to follow her father’s path into journalism. She attended the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

The school has a reputation for a strong journalism program, and Lippman said she loved Northwestern, but “Medill was a snake pit, a cruel place that reveled in its cruelty.”

After four years there, Lippman said she “felt like I had spent four years running a gauntlet of mean, old, white men.”

She said the school’s placement office did nothing to help her get a job, so she struggled for six months trying to find a job in New England. Finally, through a connection at the Atlanta Constitution, where she had done an internship, she landed a job at the Waco Tribune-Herald.

At the age of 22 in 1981, she started out earning $175 a week, which is the equivalent of about $550 today. She lived in a one-bedroom apartment that she said was kind of like a Motel 6 room, but not as nice.

She went on to work for the San Antonio Light and in 1989 returned to Baltimore, where she grew up, and wrote for the Baltimore Sun. In 1997, she published her first novel, called “Baltimore Blues” and featuring a character named Tess Monaghan, a reporter turned private investigator.

The tales of Tess Monaghan were so successful that Lippman went on to write 12 novels featuring the character. She also has penned 11 other stand-alone novels, including her latest, “Lady in the Lake,” which came out last year.

Lippman said that, in many of her novels, she wrestles with how people judge other people for being like others in their time and how people make peace with that.

For example, she knows that her direct ancestors had more than 40 slaves in their family, she said.

“I’m embarrassed. I’m chagrined. I don’t know how to talk about it sometimes,” Lippman said. “But it’s just a fact. I’m owning that fact. That’s the best I can do. I don’t know how to undo it.”

She knows that she lived a privileged life growing up and believes that coming face to face with her own flaws and mistakes is part of living in today’s world.

Over time, she acknowledged she had struggles with eating issues and a chronic shoplifting problem.

Lippman said she always enjoyed writing fiction but about two years became intrigued with personal essays because they allowed her to tell stories that only she could tell.

Her mother and her sister are a little nervous about the personal essays and don’t appreciate some of them she has written about her father, but she’s OK with it because her father is dead, she said.

She found that people strongly related to her stories, and an editor suggested she do a collection of them.

The title of the book of essays, “My Life as a Villainess,” comes from a piece she wrote years ago after going through a divorce and realizing that she’s a crime writer, but in somebody else’s story, she’s the bad guy.

“It really changed the way I wrote my novels when I had to recognize that I was the villain in somebody else’s story,” she said.

Some in the audience Friday night were big fans of Lippman, such as Amanda Hamby of Clanton.

“She’s my favorite author,” Hamby said. “I think I’ve read all her books. From the very first book in the Tess Monaghan series, I was hooked. … When I read her books, it’s really a movie in my mind. It just feels like I’m there in the story.”

When Hamby finished reading “The Girl in the Green Raincoat,” she messaged Lippman on Facebook, and Lippman wrote her back. “I just feel like she is a nice, warm person, and I think that comes through in her writing,” Hamby said.

Others in attendance Friday night, such as Leo Wright of Homewood, were unfamiliar with Lippman’s work. “I had not read any of her books and didn’t know what to expect,” Wright said.

But he came anyway because he has been coming to Southern Voices for years and thinks the event always has great authors and speakers. He wasn’t disappointed Friday night.

“I thought she did a real good job. I like that she read from her work and shared with us about her journey to become an author,” Wright said. “She was very entertaining.”

The 2020 Southern Voices Festival concludes Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. with nine other authors speaking, including Kimberly Belle, Emily Carpenter, Lauren Denton, Sally Kilpatrick, Sarah MacLean, Hampton Sides, Naima Simone, George Singleton and Snowden Wright.

The festival also included a reception with artist Carlton Nell on Tuesday, Feb. 18, and two one-act plays called “Graceland” and “Asleep on the Wind” that were performed on Wednesday and Thursday nights.