Lippman was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Columbia, Maryland. She is the daughter of Theo Lippman, Jr., a writer at the Baltimore Sun, and Madeline Mabry Lippman, a retired school librarian for the Baltimore City Public School System. Her paternal grandfather was Jewish, and the remainder of her ancestry is Scots-Irish. Lippman was raised Presbyterian. She attended high school in Columbia, Maryland, where she was the captain of the Wilde Lake High SchoolIt's Academic team. She also participated in several dramatic productions, including Finian's Rainbow,The Lark, and Barefoot in the Park. She graduated from Wilde Lake High School in 1977. Lippman is a former reporter for the now defunct San Antonio Light and the Baltimore Sun. She is best known for writing a series of novels set in Baltimore and featuring Tess Monaghan, a reporter turned private investigator. Lippman's works have won the Agatha, Anthony, Edgar, Nero, Gumshoe and Shamus awards. What the Dead Know, was the first of her books to make the New York TimesBest Seller list, and was shortlisted for the Crime Writer's Association Dagger Award. In addition to the Tess Monaghan novels, Lippman wrote 2003's Every Secret Thing, which was adapted into a 2014 movie starring Diane Lane. Lippman lives in the South Baltimore neighborhood of Federal Hill and frequently writes in the neighborhood coffee shop Spoons. In addition to writing, she teaches at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, just outside Baltimore. In January 2007, she taught at the 3rd Annual Writers in Paradise at Eckerd College. In March 2013, she was the guest of honor at Left Coast Crime. Lippman is married to David Simon, another former Baltimore Sun reporter, and creator and an executive producer of the HBO seriesThe Wire. The character Bunk is shown to be reading one of her books, In a Strange City, in episode eight of the first season of The Wire. She appeared in a scene of the first episode of the last season of The Wire as a reporter working in the Baltimore Sun newsroom. Lippman and Simon have a daughter named Georgia Ray Simon, who was born in 2010.
