The Crime Lady: UNSPEAKABLE ACTS: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit, and Obsession Publishes Today
Dear TCL Readers:
Today, July 28, is publication day for Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit & Obsession, an anthology of features and essays that best reflects the ongoing — though ever-changing — true crime moment of the past few years. I’m always proud of the anthologies I put together, but this one is special because it’s the first one of mine that includes contemporary writing (though at a slight remove — the pieces span the beginning of 2015 through the end of 2018.) Unspeakable Acts also wills into existence a collection that I, personally, have wanted to read for years, showcasing so many of the best nonfiction crime writers we have right now. (CrimeReads has republished my introductory essay to the book, which you can read right now.)
I could not be more thrilled with the online events happening this week and beyond to launch the anthology:
Tonight at 7 PM Eastern, Books Are Magic hosts me in conversation with Casey Cep, author of the New York Times bestseller Furious Hours. Register for the event here.
The following night, on Wednesday, July 29, at 8 PM Eastern, I will moderate a panel featuring contributors Pamela Colloff, Emma Copley Eisenberg, Sarah Marshall, and Rachel Monroe for Politics & Prose. Register for the event here. (The Washington City Paper highlighted the event and deemed the anthology “an excellent way to balance criticism of the genre with the very stories that make it riveting.”)
And on Thursday, August 13, at 5:30 PM Mountain/7:30 PM Eastern, Calgary WordFest is hosting a virtual happy hour with me and contributors Karen K. Ho and Leora Smith. Register for the event here.
Advance word on and publicity for the anthology has been excellent, too. The New York Times deemed it “New and Noteworthy” in the company of fiction writers Yiyun Li & Laura van den Berg, and more; I talked about true crime with the Melissa Rivers Group Text podcast (where I learned that she and her late mother were “big true crime junkies”), and recommended six true crime books with literary merit for The Week.
All books are produced by a village of indispensable people, but anthologies rely on them even more. First and foremost, Unspeakable Acts would not exist without the authors of the reprinted pieces: Alice Bolin, Pamela Colloff, Michelle Dean, Melissa del Bosque, Emma Copley Eisenberg, Jason Fagone, Elon Green, Karen K. Ho, Alex Mar, Sarah Marshall, Rachel Monroe, and Leora Smith. Their work, here and elsewhere, are the high bar of true crime.
Many more thanks to Patrick Radden Keefe, who supplied a wonderful preface; the fabulous team at Ecco, including Denise Oswald, Norma Barksdale, Martin Wilson, Meghan Deans, Miriam Parker, Ashlyn Edwards, and the project’s original shepherd, Zack Wagman, as well as everyone at HarperCollins’ library marketing & audio, and at Harper Canada (particularly my publicist there, Rebecca Silver); my dear agents, David Patterson & Aemilia Phillips; the independent booksellers who have supported my work, and those by the anthology contributors, for years and years, as well as the book publishing community as a whole; and my friends and loved ones, who know who they are.
A book is a finished product and yet I feel Unspeakable Acts is an inflection point for broader and more substantive conversations about what true crime ought to be. It arrives during a year of extensive, jarring, and terrifying upheaval, when so much is in question, under grabs, and at stake. Crime narratives, for so long, provided comfort. Sometimes they still do. To understand why, and to strive for something better, I hope this anthology can be that step in a different direction, the one true crime consumers need to take.
That was the impetus for why I wrote this essay for BuzzFeed on where the true crime genre needs to go from here, and how centering, producing, and publishing the stories of marginalized communities by those who belong in those communities is paramount. True crime has been unbearably white for far too long, and the tropes that have dominated the genre for decades, if not centuries, prop up the wrong values.
When the pool of storytellers and creators widens, we all benefit. It is truly that simple. No accident then that my favorite work of true crime this year is Natasha Trethewey’s stunning memoir Memorial Drive, also published today (by my publisher, Ecco), my favorite true crime essay was Cathy Park Hong’s piece on the life and murder of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (included in her collection Minor Feelings) and that Wesley Lowery’s work on the lynching of Timothy Coggins stands out from other true crime reporting so far this year.
I’ll return with another newsletter in a couple of weeks, and probably one more before the fall. There will be anthology-related stuff, of course, but also a return to the mix of links and recommendations. Stay safe, healthy, and masked.
Until then, I remain,
The Crime Lady