Dennis Lehane credits libraries with his becoming a writer in ALA conference speech

"I’m a writer because of libraries," Dennis Lehane told his audience at the 2010 American Library Association conference. According to Library Journal, which carried excerpts from his July 28th speech, Lehane praised the opportunities libraries offer to children from economically disadvantaged families like the one in which he was raised. "Libraries say to working-class and poor kids that they matter, that they can read the same books as the children of the hedge fund managers,” said Lehane.

Lehane, the author of such bestselling standalone novels as Mystic River (2001), Shutter Island (2003) and The Given Day (2008), read passages from his forthcoming book, Moonlight Mile. This novel is the long-awaited sequel to Gone Baby Gone (1998), the fourth book in Lehane's Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro series. Moonlight Mile will be released in the U.S. on November 2, 2010.

Responding to questions from his audience, Lehane revealed that he considered Richard Price’s 1973 novel The Wanderers to have changed his life. This tale of a teenage gang in the Bronx during the 1960s convinced him to write about the people he knew.

Lehane added that his reading interests included both "high-brow literature and classic pulp fiction." He also admitted that he refused to read books that didn't demonstrate a high regard for the English language.

Dennis Lehane was one of two mystery fiction writers addressing the ALA conference as a part of the organization's Auditorium Speaker Series. As the Mystery Series Examiner's article "ALA conference speaker John Grisham to be 2011 Honorary Chair of National Library Week" reveals, John Grisham, who has just released the first book in  new Theodore Boone series , also spoke at this meeting.

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