Rita Mae Brown

Rita Mae Brown is an American author and screenwriter whose literary career began with the groundbreaking 1973 novel Rubyfruit Jungle, one of the first mainstream American novels to portray a lesbian protagonist openly and became a landmark of feminist and LGBTQ literature. She went on to write across genres, but is perhaps best known to mystery readers for the long-running Mrs. Murphy series, a cozy mystery line co-credited to her real-life cat, Sneaky Pie Brown, which follows a Virginia postmistress, her talking cat, and a corgi as they solve small-town crimes together against a backdrop of foxhunting country life that reflects Brown's own longtime passion for the sport. Brown has published dozens of novels, essays, and screenplays over a career spanning five decades, including the Sister Jane foxhunting mystery series and numerous standalone works of fiction and nonfiction. New readers curious about her mystery fiction should start with Wish You Were Here, the first Mrs. Murphy novel, while readers interested in her literary breakthrough should read Rubyfruit Jungle. There is no film or television adaptation of the Mrs. Murphy series to date, though Rubyfruit Jungle has had a lasting cultural influence well beyond its original publication. Brown continues to write and lives on a Virginia farm that informs much of her fiction's setting.