Walter Mosley

Walter Ellis Mosley (born January 12, 1952) is an American novelist, most widely recognized for his crime fiction. He has written a series of best-selling historical mysteries featuring the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins, a black private investigator and World War II veteran living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles; they are perhaps his most popular works.

Personal life

Mosley was born in California. His mother, Ella (née Slatkin), was Jewish and worked as a personnel clerk; her ancestors had immigrated from Russia. His father, Leroy Mosley (1924-1993), was an African American from Louisiana who was a supervising custodian at a Los Angeles public school. He had worked as a clerk in the segregated US army during the Second World War. His parents tried to marry in 1951 but, though the union was legal in California where they were living, no one would give them a marriage license.

He was an only child, and ascribes his writing imagination to "an emptiness in my childhood that I filled up with fantasies". For $9.50 a week, Walter Mosley attended the Victory Baptist day school, a private African-American elementary school that held pioneering classes in black history. When he was 12, his parents moved from South Central to more comfortably affluent, working-class west LA. He graduated from Alexander Hamilton High School in 1970. Mosley describes his father as a deep thinker and storyteller, a "black Socrates". His mother encouraged him to read European classics from Dickens and Zola to Camus. He also loves Langston Hughes and Gabriel García Márquez. He was largely raised in a non-political family culture, although there were racial conflicts flaring throughout L.A. at the time. He later became more highly politicised and outspoken about racial inequalities in the US, which are a context of much of his fiction.

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Latest News for: Walter Mosley

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Ribbon cutting celebrates completion of Historic Post Office renovation

Lockport Union-Sun 24 Apr 2025

New York Secretary of State Walter Mosley visited the Historic Lockport Post Office Wednesday to recognize the completion of the $1.8 million renovation ... .

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State official to tour downtown revitalization sites

Lockport Union-Sun 23 Apr 2025

Flagship locations of Lockport’s downtown revitalization efforts will receive a visit from New York’s Secretary of State Walter Mosley today ... .

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What are L.A.’s. best books ever? Let the fighting begin

The Los Angeles Times 16 Apr 2025

... “Helter Skelter,” by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry, “The Long Goodbye,” by Raymond Chandler, “On Gold Mountain,” by Lisa See, “Devil in a Blue Dress,” by Walter Mosley.Here are some other L.A.

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Latest News for: Walter Mosley

Ribbon cutting celebrates completion of Historic Post Office renovation

State official to tour downtown revitalization sites

What are L.A.’s. best books ever? Let the fighting begin

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