Topeka ? Author Sara Paretsky, creator of the famed fictional private eye V.I. Warshawski, is being honored in Kansas with the 2011 Governor’s Distinguished Arts Award.

Paretsky, who lives in Chicago, grew up in the Lawrence area and has gained worldwide acclaim for her novels. Besides the Warshawski crime series, they include “Bleeding Kansas,” based in rural northeast Kansas where she lived as a child.

Paretsky will receive the award on March 3, 2011, at Washburn University in Topeka.