Galena LitFest: An Evening with Laura Lippman and Tracy Clark

New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman discusses her new book Murder Takes a Vacation and her writing life with Chicago crime writer Tracy Clark. Register to attend here at www.galenalibrary.org.

Laura Lippman was a reporter for twenty years, including twelve years at The (Baltimore) Sun. She began writing novels while working fulltime and published seven books about “accidental PI” Tess Monaghan before leaving daily journalism in 2025. Her work has been awarded the Edgar ®, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Shamus, the Nero Wolfe, Gumshoe and Barry awards. She also has been nominated for other prizes in the crime fiction field, including the Hammett and the Macavity. She was the first-ever recipient of the Mayor’s Prize for Literary Excellence and the first genre writer recognized as Author of the Year by the Maryland Library Association.

Tracy Clark is the acclaimed author of the Cass Raines Chicago Mystery series and the Detective Harriet Foster series. She received Anthony Award and Lefty Award nominations for series debut Broken Places, which was shortlisted for the American Library Association's RUSA Reading List and named a CrimeReads Best New PI Book of 2018, a Midwest Connections Pick, and a Library Journal Best Book of the Year. A Chicago native, Clark is a member of Crime Writers of Color, Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters in Crime and sits on the boards of Bouchercon National and the Midwest Mystery Conference.

This is a virtual program. Laura and Tracy will speak via Zoom.

Galena LitFest is the twelfth annual literary festival organized and funded by the Galena Public Library with support from the Friends of the Galena Public Library and in partnership with the Galena Center for the Arts, Champagne on Main, Galena Cellars, Fried Green Tomatoes, and Jo Daviess Conservation Foundation. Events will take place throughout January 2026 in-person and virtually.