Charlotte Carter

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Charlotte Carter is an American novelist, short story writer and poet. She is best known for the Nanette Hayes crime series, which features a jazz musician who solves mysteries in New York.

Early life
Carter grew up in Bronzeville, Chicago, in a large multigenerational family. As a teenager she read a lot and attended community college, developing interests in noir films, poetry and jazz.

Writing career

Early work
She moved to New York at age 24 and lived in the East Village near St. Mark’s Church, a hub for writers. A turning point came through a writing workshop there. In 1975 her poetry collection Sheltered Life was published. She worked for a time as an assistant to writer Franklin B. King and continued to write stories and prose poems; her book Personal Effects appeared in 1991.

The Nanette Hayes series
In the 1990s, inspired by a saxophonist busker Carter saw on 6th Avenue, she created the Nanette Hayes series. The first novel, Rhode Island Red (1997 in the UK, Serpent’s Tail), features Hayes, a saxophonist who becomes involved in a murder case. The books received strong reviews from prominent outlets. Follow-ups included Coq Au Vin (1999) and Drumsticks (2000). The series was later published in the United States by Mysterious Press and translated into several languages.

Other work
Carter also wrote crime novels set in Chicago, including Jackson Park and Trip Wire, and the supernatural thriller Beauty in the Blood, which earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was noted by The New York Times as a compelling fusion of detective fiction and horror.

Nanette Hayes reissue
The Nanette Hayes books were reissued in 2021 (US) and 2022 (UK). Carter made minor revisions for the reissues. Editors described the books as bold, powerful, and important for readers and writers of color.

Influences
Her early work was shaped by New York’s experimental writing scene and by Paul Bowles, whom she studied with in Morocco. The Nanette Hayes novels show the influence of Chester Himes, and jazz elements are often evident in their structure and language.

Works
- Sheltered Life (1975)
- Personal Effects (1991)
- Rhode Island Red (1997)
- Coq Au Vin (1999)
- Drumsticks (2000)
- Walking Bones (2002)
- Jackson Park (2003)
- Trip Wire (2005)
- Beauty in the Blood (2025)

Personal life
Carter lived in Morocco and Paris in the 1980s before returning to New York. Before publishing the Nanette Hayes books, she worked as a copyeditor and proofreader and as an editor for Cemetery Business and Legal Guide. She married Franklin B. King in the late 1990s, and he died in 2015.