Literature / Press & broadcasting
Lilian Jackson Braun
1913–2011 · mystery novelist, newspaper editor
Creator of The Cat Who… mysteries, who spent 30 years as the Detroit Free Press's Good Living editor and modeled her newspaperman hero on the Detroit press world.
- Born
Chicopee, Massachusetts- Died
Landrum, South Carolina
aged 97- Birth name
- Lilian Jackson
- Detroit years
- 1920s–1978
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Born in Massachusetts, Lilian Jackson moved to Michigan with her family as a girl and began writing as a teenager, selling sports poems to The Detroit News. She then wrote advertising copy for Detroit department stores before joining the Detroit Free Press, where she worked for three decades as editor of the Good Living section, covering homes and interior design, until retiring in 1978. Her first mystery, The Cat Who Could Read Backwards (1966), introduced reporter Jim Qwilleran and his Siamese cats, working at a big-city Midwestern daily clearly drawn from her Detroit newsroom. After a long gap she resumed the series following her retirement, moving Qwilleran to a small northern Michigan town, and wrote 29 Cat Who books in all.
Highlights
- The Cat Who… series: 29 mysteries, from 1966 to 2007
- Good Living editor at the Detroit Free Press for 30 years, retiring in 1978
- Began as a teenage sports poet for The Detroit News
- Her hero Jim Qwilleran works at a newspaper modeled on Detroit's
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Worked here · 1948–1978
Detroit Free Press Building
Closed · 1925–1998
The Albert Kahn-designed Free Press headquarters where she edited Good Living; the paper left in 1998 and the building reopened in 2020 as The Press/321 apartments and offices.