![]() But it is not the pandemic making this difficult, but the word, “was.” When Mystery Scene asked me to write about Barbara, I thought the flood of memories-our trips to Filene’s Basement, searching out the man together who could repair her fountain pens (her preferred writing instrument), our always talking and laughing in a friendship that began in 1991-would make this task a kind of Love in the Time of COVID. As is sadly often the case for some writers, she found her global appreciation greater than her appreciation here until her recent recognition by Mystery Writers of America as a Grand Master, which when announced, prompted Barbara’s reaction: “ I hope this doesn’t mean I have to relinquish my position as Empress Regnant of the Multiverse.” I can see her, head slightly cocked to one side as she says this with a beautiful smile, amazed and amused by it all. Read the Tours transcript and watch this YouTube gem from the 2012 Book World Prague and others you will find online. And Barbara was writing back then about everything in the news today-unsurprisingly prescient. In terms of her passion for social justice, her awareness, her core beliefs of who we should be in this life and who she should be, she was probably greater than almost anybody else I have known.Īt a symposium hosted by the Université de Tours in 2000, Barbara said that some people might think Blanche had “an attitude problem.” Happily, they both did. ![]() Well, Barbara had a great deal to say for herself and few have left such a rich legacy, not only in novels and short stories, her essays, plays, and the 2003 “Commonwealth Journal” WUMB-FM radio shows from U Mass Boston, but most especially for who she was: an activist, feminist, African-American woman, and deeply caring friend. “Have you anything to say for yourself?” the judge asks Blanche White in the opening sentence of Barbara Neely's first novel, Blanche on the Lam (1992). “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.
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