Sara Paretsky is a world-renowned author, highly regarded for her V.I. Warshawski series, which has revolutionized the conventions of the crime fiction genre by presenting a feminist perspective. The notion that crime fiction is merely a popular genre meant for pure entertainment has particularly been reconsidered, as Paretsky's novels serve a pedagogical purpose in capturing the reader's awareness of different social concerns. It has become evident that various female authors of crime fiction, worldwide, are adopting a similar stance in order to point out disparities and adversities within their own particular socio-cultural context. This collection of academic essays explores the influence that the work of Paretsky has had on various authors throughout the world, given the precedent she set for such a notable shift in the genre of crime fiction.
About the Author: Enrico Minardi teaches Italian and French at Arizona State University. His publications include two books on the contemporary Italian writers Pier Vittorio Tondelli (2003) and Enrico Palandri (2010, in collaboration with Monica Francioso), on whom he also edited a collection of essays (2010, in collaboration with Monica Francioso). With Cristina Caracchini, he is currently editing a collection of essays on Italian modern poetry and cognitivist thought, titled Il Pensiero della Poesia. His current research interests are focused particularly on modern female authorship in Italian poetry, and he has published a series of essays on Annie Vivanti, Antonia Pozzi, and Vivien Lamarque, amongst others. He has also written articles on some of the major poetic figures of the Italian twentieth century, such as Pier Paolo Pasolini and Giovanni Raboni. With Taylor Corse, he has recently published the English translation of a collection of poems by the contemporary Italian poet Ferruccio Benzoni. Jennifer Byron is a doctoral candidate in the Spanish Department at Arizona State University. Her current research interests include the digital humanities, media studies, gender and women's studies, contemporary peninsular literature, crime fiction, and transatlantic studies. Her most recent publications include Construcciones de la identidad femenina en el espacio virtual: el caso de la blogosfera espanola y la literatura digital del blook (published in the University of Kentucky's academic journal Nomenclatura: aproximaciones a los estudios hispanicos) and Wordtoys: La coleccion de poesia digital de Belen Gacheque desmantela la nocion de 'literatura tradicional' y la etiqueta de escritura femenina (published in the academic journal Letras Femeninas).