Joanne Dobson (born March 27, 1942 in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

) is a writer of mystery novels and features in ''Great Women Mystery Writers'' (2007).page 69-71, ''Great Women Mystery Writers'', 2nd Ed. by Elizabeth Blakesley Lindsay, 2007, publ. Greenwood Press,

Biography

Dobson graduated in 1963 from The King's College, New York gaining a degree in English. She later earned a master's from the University of New York at Albany in 1977 and a phD from the

University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, it ...

in 1985. She taught at

Amherst College Amherst College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher educatio ...

and

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...

before becoming a tenure-track professor at

Fordham University Fordham University () is a Private university, private Jesuit universities, Jesuit research university in New York City. Established in 1841 and named after the Fordham, Bronx, Fordham neighborhood of the The Bronx, Bronx in which its origina ...

. She founded a scholarly society devoted to Emily Dickinson and was a founding editor of '' Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers''. She has taught Fulbright Fellowship International summer programs at

, and currently teaches courses at th
Hudson Valley Writers’ Center
in Sleepy Hollow, which in 2014 honored her as a writer, teacher, and scholar. She lives in

Brewster, New York Brewster is a village and the principal settlement within the town of Southeast in Putnam County, New York. Its population was 2,390 at the time of the 2010 census. The village, which is the most densely populated portion of the county, was nam ...

Writing

Until recently Dobson's work has featured Karen Pelletier, an English professor at Enfield College in Enfield, Massachusetts, a fictionalized

. Pelletier is from working class Lowell and became an unmarried mother in high school and estranged from her family. She gets involved in cases involving manuscripts, writers and academia and often in liaison with the local police, specifically detective Charlie Piotrowski with whom she develops a personal relationship through the series. In 2016, Dobson published the short story ''In The Attic'', which continued Pelletier's story. In 2012, Dobson announced a new series written in collaboration with

Beverle Graves Myers Beverle Graves Myers (born March 31, 1951) is an American author of mystery novels and short stories. Her major work is the Tito Amato mystery series set in 18th-century Venice, published by Poisoned Pen Press. She is also the co-author, with Jo ...

set in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

New York and featuring a seasoned homicide detective and two young women, a nurse and a reporter. The book, ''Face of The Enemy'', was on the bestseller list of the Maine Sunday Telegram. In 2014, Dobson published ''The Kashmiri Shawl'', her first historical fiction novel.

Bibliography

Karen Pelletier series

* ''Quieter Than Sleep: A Modern Mystery of Emily Dickinson'' (1997) * ''The Northbury Papers'' (1998) * ''The Raven and the Nightingale: A Modern Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe'' (1999) * ''Cold and Pure and Very Dead'' (2000) * ''The Maltese Manuscript'' (2003) * ''Death Without Tenure'' (2009) * ''In the Attic'' (short story) (2016)

New York in Wartime Mysteries

* ''Face of the Enemy'' (2012), with

Other novels

* ''The Kashmiri Shawl'' (2014)

Non-fiction

* "The Scholar Sleuth: Or, Death in a Literary Context", conference paper, in ''AZ Murder Goes ... Professional'', ed. Barbara Peters (2002)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dobson, Joanne 1942 births Living people 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American novelists American mystery writers American women novelists Amherst College faculty Fordham University faculty People from Brewster, New York The King's College (New York City) alumni University of Massachusetts Amherst alumni University at Albany, SUNY alumni Tufts University faculty Writers from New York City Women mystery writers 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers Novelists from New York (state) Novelists from Massachusetts American women academics