The brilliant mystery writer Raymond Chandler spent his childhood in three different countries—-America, Ireland, and England, and each place had a distinct influence on his writing and personality.
‘The Big Sleep’, his first novel, was published in 1939, elevating the hardboiled detective story to classic crime literature. Chandler went on to write numerous stories and seven novels, many filmed and now regarded as classics of the Film Noir genre.

Chandler biographer Judith Freeman comes to Waterford Library on Wednesday 11th October to discuss his early years, with a special emphasis on his time living in Waterford with his Irish relatives.

Booking required – contact the Library on 051 849975 or CentralLibrary@waterfordcouncil.ie

Judith Freeman is the author of a collection of short stories, Family Attractions, and five novels, including The Chinchilla Farm, Set for Life, A Desert of Pure Feeling, Red Water, and MacArthur Park. She received the Western Heritage Literary Award in1992, and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction in 1996. In 2005, she was a Visiting Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford, where she did research for The Long Embrace, her biography of Raymond Chandler, and in 2012 she was awarded the Harry Ransom Center’s Erle Stanley Gardner Fellowship to continue her research into Chandler. Her memoir, The Latter Days, was published in 2016.

India, an account of a trip to Rajasthan made in 1992 with the photographer Tina Barney, will be published in 2024. Her essays and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines and publications, including the New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She previously taught at University of Southern California in the Master of Professional Writing Program.

She divides her time between a small farm in Idaho and a residence Los Angeles and is married to the photographer/artist Anthony Hernandez.