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| Margaret Maron | |
Margaret Brown Maron, the award-winning mystery writer who published 30 books and was one of the founders of Sisters in Crime, died on February 23 due to complications from a stroke. She was 82.
Maron began her writing career in 1968 when she published "The Death of Me," her first short story, in Alfred Hitchhock's Mystery Magazine. At the time she was living in Brooklyn, N.Y., with her husband and only son, and had given herself a writing course from books in the Brooklyn Public Library. In 1972 Maron and her family moved to North Carolina, and Maron would go on to write all her books there.
Born in Greensboro, N.C., Maron featured the state heavily in her writing. Her Judge Deborah Knott series, which began in 1992 with the publication of Bootlegger's Daughter, consisted of 20 books and starred an attorney who is the daughter of a North Carolina bootlegger.
Over the course of her career, Maron served as the third president of Sisters in Crime as well as president of Mystery Writers of America. She was named a Grand Master by the MWA in 2013, and the her books have received Edgar, Agatha, Anthony and Macavity Awards. In 2008 she received the North Carolina Award, which is the state's highest civilian honor. In 2010 she received an honorary doctorate from UNC Greensboro and in 2016 was inducted into the state's Literary Hall of Fame.
"My epitaph should read, 'She knew what she had,' " Maron once said. "I have been supremely lucky with my husband, my family, my friends and my work. Nobody gets it all, but I came pretty damn close."