Pioneering crime fiction writer and past SinC President Eleanor Taylor Bland will be inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame August 1st.

From the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame announcement:

Bland [Dec. 31, 1944-June 2, 2010] wrote 16 police procedural novels featuring suburban detective Marti MacAlistor. The series began with 1992’s Dead Time and concluded with 2005’s A Dark and Deadly Deception. She also wrote short stories and edited Shades of Black, an anthology of crime and mystery stories written by Black authors.

Sisters in Crime’s The Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award annually grants $2,000 to a writer following a path Bland helped to blaze. Sara Paretsky wrote a tribute on her website that read, “She was among the first, if not the first, to create a hero who challenged the ‘mammy-whore’ stereotypes of African-American women. She believed the crime novel was a perfect vehicle for pushing the boundaries of America’s class/race/sex consciousness because you can tell a story and explore issues at the same time. With Marti Macallister, she said, she could ‘comment on slices of life within black culture….This is the one genre where you can talk about it and have a little fun with it.’ Her passionate commitment to the lives of children and those damaged families who get swept under our social-judicial rugs showed up time and again in her fiction. Eleanor’s support of the written word was legendary. She served on the board of the Waukegan Public Library and chaired their friends of the library. She also mentored writers like Libby Fischer Hellman and Michael Dymmoch, and served as president of Sisters in Crime.”

https://chicagoliteraryhof.org/events_entry/induction-ceremony-2026

For more on SinC’s Eleanor Taylor Bland Award:

https://www.sistersincrime.org/page/EleanorTaylorBland