Left Coast Crime

 Are you going to Left Coast Crime in Albuquerque on April 7-10, 2022?

It’s a conference for mystery writers and readers.

You can help support Great Little Libraries in New Mexico.

 

Background on Great Little Libraries Program. In 2019, the State of New Mexico identified its fifty smallest public libraries in rural areas. These libraries are on pueblos, in unincorporated towns, or in towns with small commercial sectors. Thus, municipal tax support is usually non-existent, and the New Mexico Rural Library Endowment Fund provides a maximum of $2,500 a year to individual libraries. Most of these libraries were created by grass-root efforts of citizens in the community and function with no paid employees.

Community public libraries are a valuable resource in any state. However, they are particularly important in New Mexico because the state ranked 50^th in K-12 education programs in 2018.

Croak and Dagger, the New Mexico chapter of Sisters in Crime, created the Great Little Libraries Adventure to help these fifty smallest public libraries several years ago. We try to supply these libraries with books by our authors and offer to do programs and displays for them to encourage reading and writing. The board for Left Coast Crime agreed to adopt our Croak and Dagger Program in 2021. Thus, all funds raised at the charity auction and all books left over from the Left Coast Crime conference in Albuquerque on April 7-10 will be distributed to New Mexico’s fifty smallest libraries. So, be sure to donate books and bid on items if you attend the conference. For more details on Left Coast Crime see: https://www.leftcoastcrime.org/2022.

Libraries may use the funds for materials, services to support community literacy, or infrastructure challenges that inhibit the library’s literacy mission. Croak & Dagger will request a brief report from each library about how the donation has addressed literacy initiatives in that community.

Learn more about rural towns and pueblos in New Mexico. Although many of the pueblos of New Mexico are famous for their pottery and casinos, agriculture is still a major source of income on the pueblos. If you want to get in the mood for your visit to Left Coast Crime or just want to learn a little about rural life in New Mexico, read a book about the problems in New Mexico agriculture today.

Life is tough on the pueblos of the Southwest. Opportunities and water are always limited. In the thriller, A POUND OF FLESH, SORTA, life gets a lot tougher on the Acoma pueblo when the plague hits the livestock and one man is killed in mysterious accident in a nearby meat packing plant while another disappears. Scientist Sara Almquist thinks she has clues to solve the mysteries if she's not killed first.

Book at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0960028560

J. L. Greger was a faculty member in the College of Agriculture and Life Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for many years and was involved in a number of outreach program in rural areas. She is now an active member of Croak and Dagger, the New Mexico chapter of Sisters in Crime. https://www.jlgreger.com