Conversations with James Ellroy

As a novelist who has spent years crafting and refining his intense and oft
outrageous "Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction" persona, James Ellroy
has used interviews as a means of shaping narratives outside of his novels.
Conversations with James Ellroy covers a series of interviews given by Ellroy
from 1984 to 2010, in which Ellroy discusses his literary contribution and
his public and private image.
Born Lee Earle Ellroy in 1948, James Ellroy is one of the most critically
acclaimed and controversial contemporary writers of crime and historical
fiction. Ellroy's complex narratives, which merge history and fiction,
have pushed the boundaries of the crime fiction genre: American Tabloid, a
revisionist look at the Kennedy era, was Time magazine's Novel of the Year
1995, and his novels L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia were adapted
into films. Much of Ellroy's remarkable life story has served as the template
for the personal obsessions that dominate his writing. From the brutal,
unsolved murder of his mother, to his descent into alcohol and drug abuse,
his sexual voyeurism, and his stints at the Los Angeles County Jail, Ellroy
has lived through a series of hellish experiences that few other writers
could claim.
Steven Powell is an independent scholar and the co-founder and co-editor
of the crime fiction studies website The Venetian Vase. He is the editor of
the forthcoming 100 American Crime Writers.