How 4 Women Crime Writers Build in Social Commentary

By Mark Mathes

How do some of the top women crime writers build social issues into their crime stories? Four women authors share their tips and techniques at the Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival. My notes, quotes and paraphrases from the session March 29, 2025.

JM Redmann, moderator

How do some social issues come into your book?

What is true?

What is justice? How do you search for justice?

Generational trauma, queer, 

How do you deal with being political in a story?

Emma Copley Eisenberg

There were a lot of moments in my book when people wanted justice.

How a single crime ripples through a community in true crime best-seller?

I try to include real people.

If you’re writing about people in America, you’re writing about people who are fat. Half the people are fat.

Emma Copley Eisenberg [pronounced cop-ley] is the author of the novel Housemates, which was a national bestseller and named a best book of the year by The Boston Globe, People, NBC, Them.Us, Autostraddle, and Kirkus Reviews as well as one of Electric Literature’s “Top 5 Novels of 2024” and Time Magazine’s “16 Best Books to Read for Pride.” Her narrative nonfiction book, The Third Rainbow Girl, was a New York Times Notable Book and Editor’s Choice, as well as a finalist for an Edgar Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and an Anthony Award, among other honors. Her fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in Granta, Esquire, The New Republic, Lux, The Washington Post Magazine, VQR, and many other publications. She lives in Philadelphia, where she co-founded Blue Stoop, a community hub for the literary arts. Her short story collection, Fat Swim, is forthcoming from Hogarth in 2026.

C.S, Harris

She wrote her first book 30 years ago. 21 books. Wrote 3 thrillers with her husband.

My protagonist wife writes. It helps to paint a picture of what life was like in Regency England. Like child labor laws. I could not have a character who was in the lower class. I gave him a military background, an officer who worked in intelligence. I had 6 degrees of separation, but not with all characters.

It allows me to tackle themes in my series. My protagonist takes on this role in fighting for amends for the sins he committed. He openly acknowledges his sins.

You can put something in book three and you can elaborate on it in book four. I have a historical story arc, then I have a personal story arc, and there are historical people and events like Napoleon that I can’t ignore.

I try to put an author’s note to explain.

C.S. Harris is the USA Today bestselling author of more than 30 novels, including the Sebastian St. Cyr historical mystery series. As C.S. Graham she co-authored a contemporary thriller series with former intelligence officer Steven Harris; she has also published historicals under her own name, Candice Proctor. A respected scholar with a PhD in 18th and 19th century history, she is the author of a groundbreaking nonfiction historical study of women in the French Revolution. Her 20th Sebastian St. Cyr novel, Who Will Remember, is available April 15.

Angie Kim

Writing is my 5th career. Harvard Law grad, Korean immigrant.

The issues just come out for me.

She explores medical issues in debut book.

I write as an outsider for a long time, not only for immigrants but also people with disabilities. The 14-year-old son is a nonspeaker with autism. Or, they say he can’t speak.

Justice is important to me because I was a litigator. I didn’t try to achieve justice in the story. My book dealt with a young single mom who deals with an autistic son. 

It really happened.

I have all these ideas and I try to write them in.

My second book was about a dad in a hospital. How to help the dad figure out what happiness is. I didn’t know how to include him in happiness events. I had to change the story, how the family communicated with the boy. That became the heart of the story.

People and critics sometimes equate a chapter’s point of view.

I had 7 POV characters. That doesn’t mean it’s my POV.

There is a danger of equating our characters with those of our POV.

Angie Kim is the New York Times bestselling author of Happiness Falls, a GMA and Barnes & Noble book club pick, winner of the Virginia Literary Award, and Oprah Daily’s #1 novel of 2023. Her debut novel, Miracle Creek, won the Edgar Award and was named one of the 100 best mysteries and thrillers of all time by Time magazine. A Korean immigrant who moved to Baltimore in middle school, Kim studied philosophy at Stanford University and attended Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Marcie Rendon

I didn’t know book awards were a thing when I did my first book. Several nominations.

I write what I know. 

Her Cash Blackbear series is about Native Americans. Vietnam War, women’s rights are in the book.

There is a foster parent, they say no this is wrong. By just taking charge in the 1970s, the story was how they fight for social justice.

Marcie R. Rendon is an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation. Rendon is the best-selling author of Where They Last Saw Her (Penquin/Random House), and the Pinckley Prize author of Murder on the Red River in the Cash Blackbear series, the most recent of which is Broken Fields (Soho Press). Rendon’s poetry, Anishinaabe Songs for the New Millennium (University of Minnesota Press), was released in 2024; and Stitches of Tradition, a children’s picture book (Heartdrum), also in 2024. Rendon was the 2020 McKnight Artist of the Year, was recognized as a 50 over 50 Change-maker by Minnesota AARP and POLLEN in 2018, and was listed in Oprah’s 2020 list of 31 Native American Authors to read.

Now in its 40th year, The Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival is a five-day event held each spring in New Orleans' historic French Quarter that attracts participants from around the world. They also host Saints+Sinners LGBTQ Literary Festival the same weekend. .





mark mathes

mmathes1@gmail.com

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My publishing career of 5 decades. LinkedIn. Connect  there?

Many of my 80 published books since 2015. Many as editor at regional independent Pelican Publishing in my hometown New Orleans. 

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