Editing Laurie R. King (section)

==Life and career==

Born in [[Oakland, California]], King earned a degree in comparative religion from the [[University of California, Santa Cruz]] in 1977 and a masters in theology from the [[Graduate Theological Union]] in 1984, where her thesis was on "Feminine Aspects of Yahweh". She later received an honorary doctorate from the [[Church Divinity School of the Pacific]] in [[Berkeley, California]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://news.ucsc.edu/2016/03/king-laurie-r.html|title=The storyteller and the detective|first=Peggy|last=Townsend|website=UC Santa Cruz News|access-date=18 June 2019}}</ref>

Among King's books are the [[Mary Russell (fictional)|Mary Russell]] series of historical mysteries, featuring [[Sherlock Holmes]] as her mentor and later partner, and a series featuring [[Kate Martinelli]], a lesbian police officer in [[San Francisco, California|San Francisco]]. Using the pseudonym "Leigh Richards", she has published a science fiction novel, ''Califia's Daughters'' (2004). Across those genres, she explores several humanist themes including the effects of war on soldiers as they attempt to find their place when returning home. This is seen in several of the Mary Russell novels and has been described in a comparison of the detectives in ''Keeping Watch'' (2003) and ''Touchstone'' (2007).<ref>Gillies, Mary Ann. 2020. Liminal Spaces in Laurie R. King’s Touchstone and Keeping Watch. In Maarit Piipponen, Helen Mäntymäki & Marinella Rodi-Risberg (eds.), ''Transnational Crime Fiction: Mobility, Borders and Detection,'' 153–168.</ref>
 
She lives in [[Watsonville, California]],<ref>page 133, ''Great Women Mystery Writers'', 2nd Ed. by Elizabeth Blakesley Lindsay, 2007, publ. Greenwood Press, {{ISBN|0-313-33428-5}}</ref> in the hills above [[Monterey Bay]], southeast of [[Santa Cruz, California|Santa Cruz]]. From 1977 until his death in early 2009, she was married to the historian Noel Quinton King.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/santacruzsentinel/obituary.aspx?n=noel-q-king&pid=123752803 |title=Noel King Obituary - Santa Cruz, CA &#124; Santa Cruz Sentinel |publisher=Legacy.com |date=2009-02-05 |access-date=2019-06-18}}</ref> They are the parents of two children.