G.P. Putnam’s Sons Launches Sue Grafton Memorial Award

G.P. Putnam’s Sons is partnering with the Mystery Writers of America to create the Sue Grafton Memorial Award, honoring the best novel in a series featuring a female protagonist. The award will seek to honor work that has "the hallmarks of Sue’s writing" as well as those of her most famous character, Detective Kinsey Millhone: "a woman with quirks but also with a sense of herself, with empathy but also with savvy, intelligence, and wit."

The inaugural Sue Grafton Memorial Award will be presented at the 73rd Annual Edgar Awards in New York City on April 25, 2019—the day after what would have been the late Grafton's 79th birthday —and will be presented annually there to honor Grafton's life and work.

The nominees for the inaugural Sue Grafton Memorial Award were chosen by the 2019 Best Novel and Best Paperback Original Edgar Award judges from the books submitted to them throughout the year. The winner will be chosen by a reading committee made up of current national board members, and will be announced at this year’s Edgars Award banquet.

The nominees for the inaugural Sue Grafton Memorial Award are:

• Lisa Black, Perish (Kensington)
• Sara Paretsky, Shell Game, (William Morrow)
• Victoria Thompson, City of Secrets (Berkley)
• Charles Todd, A Forgotten Place, (William Morrow)
• Jacqueline Winspear, To Die But Once, (Harper)