Sara Paretsky

Essays

Click below to browse Sara’s library of essays.

The Brothers Karamozov
Read from the afterword Sara wrote for this new edition of The Brothers Karamozov. ” more >

Ode to the Season: When Your Landlord is a Precinct Captain
Chicago Tribune, December 18, 2007
I came to Chicago from Kansas in 1966 to do community service work in Gage Park, near where Martin Luther King and Al Raby were trying to organize for open housing and social justice. It was a turbulent time in the city, but during my summer on the South Side, I developed a passion for Chicago. more >

Refusing to allow pressure to silence a critical voice
Chicago Tribune Op-Ed, April 1, 2007
The night we began our invasion of Iraq -- March 20, 2003 -- I was speaking at the Toledo public library. The day before, my speakers bureau told me that the library wanted me to change my proposed remarks; my talk on how the Patriot Act was affecting writers, readers and libraries was too political. The library wanted instead the kind of humorous anecdotes that other writers used. With war imminent, the library felt that a criticism of the Bush administration was an insult to local families who had relatives in the service. more >

Writing in an Age of Silence
In this powerful new book, Sara Paretsky explores the traditions of political and literary dissent that have informed her life and work, against the unparallelled repression of free speech and thought in the US today. ” more >

Bush's Pick a Reminder of What's Not Right
Chicago Tribune Op-Ed, January 7, 2007
From the beginning of his presidency, George W. Bush has done his best to undermine a woman's right to adulthood. His latest effort has been to appoint Eric Keroack to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Population Affairs. more >

Truth, Lies, and Duct Tape
Maybe you already knew that the Patriot Act lets law enforcement people search libraries, bookstores, and even our homes without probable cause. Or that librarians who say the FBI was there can go to jail for an indefinite period of time. I didn’t know any of that, let alone that police or FBI have seized circulation records from almost twenty percent of our country's libraries. more >

Writers on Writing
New York Times, September 25, 2001 Some months ago, I had a letter from a reader who was so furious she covered four pages by hand, demanding to know why my books are “infested” with political issues. “When I buy a mystery I expect to be entertained and when you bring in all that stuff about homeless people, you aren't entertaining me.” more >