Organized By Women & Children First Bookstore
5233 N Clark St,Chicago (41.977300, -87.668302)
Please join us for a reading and conversation about the history of women detectives--on the page and in real life! Everyone is welcome for this free event, no reservation required. From its very beginning, police work was considered a male domain, far too dangerous and rough for a woman. Just a handful of women refused to let that stop them, and in the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century became real-life sleuths. Yet within the covers of popular fiction, many women not only wrote mysteries but also created female characters that handily solved crimes, such as Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and later Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski, who did the same. Pistols and Petticoatsis a lively exploration of the struggles faced by women in law enforcement and mystery fiction for the past 175 years. Erika Janik is the author of A Short History of Wisconsin and Odd Wisconsin: Amusing, Perplexing, and Unlikely Stories from Wisconsin's Past. Her work has appeared in Midwest Living and the Onion. Originally from Redmond, Washington, she now lives in Madison with her husband.