Established in 2014, The Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color awards a $2,000 grant to an emerging writer of color at the beginning of their crime writing career. The award honors the late pioneering African American crime fiction author Eleanor Taylor Bland. Candidates must apply by March 31st and the winner will be announced in May.
The grantee may choose to apply the grant toward workshops, seminars, conferences, retreats, online courses and research activities to assist in completion of their work. Strongly aligned with Sisters in Crime’s mission to promote the ongoing advancement, recognition and professional development of current and prospective members, “this award welcomes future crime writers of color into the mystery writing fold,” says Stephanie Gale, Pushcart Prize-nominated author and President of the National Board of Sisters in Crime. “As the former grants liaison, I know the award has inspired the winner and runners up to keep writing. There are writers of color crushing the crime writing genre and I want more of it.”
CrimeReads asked judges and recipients about the legacy of Eleanor Taylor Bland and the state of publishing today for writers of color.
Wanda M. Morris is an alumna of the Yale Writers’ Workshop and Robert McKee’s Story Seminar. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America. As a corporate attorney, she has worked in the legal departments of several Fortune 100 companies. An accomplished presenter and leader, Morris has previously served as president of the Georgia chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel and is the founder of its Women’s Initiative, an empowerment program for female in-house lawyers. Morris is married, the mother of three and lives in Atlanta, Georgia. All Her Little Secrets is her debut novel.
Sujata Massey is the author of the Perveen Mistry series set in 1920s India, including THE WIDOWS OF MALABAR HILL, winner of the Agatha, Mary Higgins Clark, Macavity and Left Coast Crime awards. She’s also the author of 14 other works of fiction, many of which have either won or been nominated for the above awards as well as the Anthony, Edgar, Barry and Shamus. Sujata is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars and was a former reporter at the Baltimore Evening Sun newspaper. She lives in Baltimore with her family and frequently travels to India, her ancestral home and the setting for her current mystery series.
Yasmin Angoe is the debut author of the bestselling and award-winning thriller Her Name Is Knight. She is a first-generation Ghanaian American and has worked in education for nearly twenty years as a middle and high school teacher and instructional coach. Currently, Yasmin works as a developmental editor and sensitivity reader for publishers and authors.
Yasmin received the 2020 Eleanor Taylor Bland Award for Emerging Writers of Color from Sisters in Crime of which she is a member. She is also a proud member of numerous crime, mystery, and thriller writing groups and organizations like Crime Writers of Color, Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers.
When she’s not writing, Yasmin’s editing for clients, searching what show or movie to binge, absorbed in an audiobook, or obsessing the fact she should probably be writing at that very moment.
Yasmin is represented by Melissa Edwards at Stonesong Literary and Addison Duffy at United Talent Agency.
CrimeReads: How can we best honor the legacy of Eleanor Taylor Bland?
Sujata Massey: I was fortunate enough to meet Eleanor at a few Malice Domestic conventions in the 1990s. I remember Eleanor inviting to join a few other writers of color for lunch—basically, all five of us were the entire nonwhite camp at the conference.She thought it was so important to support each other, It’s easy for a writer to get lost in the publishing world with an under-promoted first book. There are many obstacles to having more books published.. Eleanor would be smiling to see how our numbers have increased, and that in an award named for her, some lucky writers will have a chance to become known to others at conferences and get a foot in the door with agents and editors.
Yasmin Angoe: I think the best way to honor the legacy of Eleanor Taylor Bland is to continue doing what we’re doing, but more. There is still a lot of talk about what needs to be done to highlight authors of color and to open up doors that are usually closed to them. But there are still barriers. Authors of color have to be practically perfect with their work whereas their White counterparts don’t have that kind of pressure. So allowing authors of color the same leeway white authors get. Allowing them to tell the stories they want to tell without it centering trauma or being profound, allowing those authors to publish stories that are about people of color doing their everyday things proving to all readers that they can indeed relate to characters who don’t look like them is how we can best honor Eleanor Taylor Bland’s legacy.
What advice do you wish you’d heard early on in your writing career?
Wanda Morris: As a new writer, I got so much advice, much of it conflicting and confusing. Advice that included everything from the best time of day to write to the best type of character to write. I wish someone had broken through the noise of all that advice and simply told me, write the story the way you want to write it. For years, I avoided writing my novel in dual timelines simply because a workshop instructor said “never write in dual timelines because readers will like one timeline and not the other.” It was only when I finally unshackled myself from that piece of advice and wrote my novel, All Her Little Secrets, in dual timelines did the story finally come together in a cohesive and engaging way.
YA: I wish I’d heard to give myself grace and to train myself how to manage my time. Because that’s my major struggle, giving myself grace for when I think I messed up. I’m super hard on myself when I don’t need to be. And I definitely don’t have my work-life balance down. I’m still work in progress with that one.
SM: Go ahead and write about places and people who are not already appearing on the NYT Bestseller list. I remember how anxious I felt at a conference in 1997. A powerful editor spoke into a microphone to a packed room, saying that England and Italy were the only foreign settings that were commercially viable. She had sounded the death knell for my books, but fortunately, they were published, and so have many more mysteries in countries of the Brown.At the same time, think very seriously about the setting you choose to write about. A foreign country connected to your own living experience and/or family history is wonderful if you feel brave enough to look at the place honestly. You also should really love it, because you will have to return many times in the future and maintain ties with your experts there in various cultural institutions.
How have mentors and crime writing organizations helped in developing your career?
YA: I would be so lost without the crime writing organizations I’m apart of, and the veteran writers who offer advice and support. They really uplift you and they also give you the real talk about how the industry can be and how they’ve managed it. Hearing their stories really helped me put things in perspective and when I experienced the same things they spoke about I was able to recall what I was told and it helped guide my decisions. Also, writing can be such an isolating thing that a writer needs a tribe of others who are on the same journey.
SM: I didn’t have a mentor, but I listened carefully to my night-school creative writing teachers. I took 3 night courses in the Johns Hopkins Odyssey program while I was writing my first book, The Salaryman’s Wife. The class members were the first people ever to see my rough first attempts, and their enthusiasm fueled me to keep producing. Louise Titchener, a Sisters in Crime author who taught me mystery writing at Odyssey, wrote in big letters on the blackboard “Malice Domestic.” I had no idea that this was a convention just ah hour from me—but her suggestion led to their website and learning about the Malice Domestic Unpublished Writers Grant. I was thrilled to win the grant based on five chapters of my book—and that got me a number of agents reading my book, and perhaps played a role in the book selling to a publisher.
(For judges): As judges for the Eleanor Taylor Bland award, what do you look for in submissions?
WM: I’d like to see submissions that immediately immerse me in the story. I like to read books that take me off on a journey, whether the author does that through setting, a character or story structure. That doesn’t mean there has to be fireworks and gunshots at the beginning. But it does mean the author has to place enough “breadcrumbs” at the start that I want to keep reading to see where the story is going. There is so much diverse talent out in the writing community these days. I am excited about reading all the wonderful submissions coming our way!
SM: I am looking for a realistic, powerful voice. Also for a writer’s individuality, storytelling ability, and suspense. And creative use of words!
What are some of the best ways to support authors of color in genre fiction?
SM: Some of the best ways to support writers of color are to invite them to speak at your library, book club, or any type of event. Being seen as an author is a great way to convince people to try a book they might never have picked up, due to the idea the book’s characters seem very alien. Writers of color are not all writing social issues books—we are writing enjoyable books that can take you back in history, rivet you with psychological suspense, get you hungry for brownies, and so on. I’ve written two mystery series: one set in Japan and the other in India. When I told some bookclub members familiar with my Japan books that my next book would be set in India, some of the readers expressed worry that the book would be very sad and not as enjoyable as books set in Japan. This shows how hard we have to work to convince people to go past stereotypes. The joy is that mystery can accomplish this more easily than any other genre.
YA: The best ways are to do what I mentioned with the legacy of ETB question. It’s easy to call oneself an ally. Everyone says it. It’s the follow through that matters though. Its continuing to do what you said you’re going to do (provide agent and editor talks, publish more books by authors of color, market those books, provide publicity that fits the author and the demographic and hit it hard. That’s what’s key, I think. Lots of people in the publishing world don’t know how to best publish books from authors of color so they either don’t really do it, or they do it wrong. Because you’re publishing an author of color, you need to push their books hard in marketing and publicity.
How have recent publishing promises to support authors of color panned out over the past year? What still needs to happen to bypass gatekeepers and make the mystery genre more diverse?
YA: LOL. See my above answers. Everything is all talk. And action when some national trauma happens is also all talk. We need the publishing industry to put their money where their mouths are. They need to stick with it too. It has to last, their allyship, support, and hype—all has to last to make the mystery genre more diverse.
What do you want to see more of, when it comes to crime writing?
YA: I just want to see more stories of people from marginalized communities doing all the things we always read white male characters doing. I want stories with us to be as normal as putting on a pair of socks. I’d say as normal as apple pie, but not everyone digs apple pie.
