Johnny Temple is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Akashic Books, an award-winning Brooklyn-based independent company dedicated to publishing urban literary fiction and political nonfiction. He won the 2013 Ellery Queen Award, the American Association of Publishers’ 2005 Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing; and the 2010 Jay and Dean Kogan Award for Excellence in Noir Literature. Temple teaches courses on the publishing business at Wilkes University and Wesleyan University; and is the Chair of the Brooklyn Literary Council, which works with Brooklyn’s borough president to plan the annual Brooklyn Book Festival. He also plays bass guitar in the band Girls Against Boys, which has toured extensively across the globe and released numerous albums on independent and major record companies. He has contributed articles and political essays to various publications, including The Nation, Publishers Weekly, AlterNet, Poets & Writers, and BookForum.
Megan Abbott is the Edgar Award–winning author of six novels, including Dare Me, The End of Everything, and Bury Me Deep. Her writing has appeared in Detroit Noir, Queens Noir, Phoenix Noir, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine. She is the author of The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity and Urban Space in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir and editor of A Hell of a Woman, a female crime fiction anthology. She has been nominated for various awards, including the Steel Dagger, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Pushcart Prize.
Lawrence Block has won most of the major mystery awards, and has been called the quintessential New York writer, although he insists the city's far too big to have a quintessential writer. His series characters-Matthew Scudder, Bernie Rhodenbarr, Evan Tanner, Chip Harrison, and Keller-all live in Manhattan; like their creator, they would not really be happy anywhere else.
Tim Broderick is the creator of a graphic novel series featuring David Diangelo that originated as a webcomic on the Internet. He and his wife live in Chicago with their twin daughters, and all the women in the house are far smarter than he. He’s currently president of the Midwest chapter of Mystery Writers of America and is working on his fourth book, Children of the Revolution, which can be read for free at timbroderick.net.
Jerome Charyn is the author of more than fifty works of fiction and nonfiction, including Sergeant Salinger (forthcoming from Bellevue Literary Press in January 2021); Cesare: A Novel of War-Torn Berlin; The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King: A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt and His Times; In the Shadow of King Saul: Essays on Silence and Song; Jerzy: A Novel; and A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century. Among other honors, his novels have been selected as finalists for the Firecracker Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Charyn has also been named a Commander of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture and received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in New York.
Lee Child was fired and out of work when he hatched a harebrained scheme to write a best-selling novel, thus saving his family from ruin. Killing Floor went on to launch the New York Times #1 best-selling Jack Reacher series with over 100 million books sold in forty-nine languages. Forbes calls it "the strongest brand in publishing." The series has spawned two feature films and an upcoming Amazon Prime Video series.
Reed Farrel Coleman, author of fifteen novels, has been called a “hard-boiled poet” by NPR’s Maureen Corrigan and the “noir poet laureate” in the Huffington Post. He is the three-time winner of the Shamus Award for Best PI Novel of the Year and is a two-time Edgar Award nominee. He has also received the Macavity, Barry, and Anthony awards. Coleman is an adjunct professor of English at Hofstra University, and lives with his family on Long Island.
Jeffery Deaver, the author of The Bone Collector and a number of other international bestsellers, was born outside of Chicago but lived in downtown Manhattan for nearly twenty years. He was an attorney on Wall Street before turning to writing thrillers full-time. One of his first novels was titled Manhattan Is My Beat, an Edgar Award–nominee about a crime involving a (fictional) film noire.
Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is author of Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman’s Guide to Igniting the Writer Within. She has worked as an auto-parts runner, baker, crisis intervention counselor, and more. Her nonfiction has been published in Orange Coast, Westways, the Los Angeles Times, The Writer, Writer’s Digest, and Poets & Writers. She teaches “Jumpstart Your Writing” for Gotham Writers’ Workshop and hosts Writers on Writing on KUCI-FM. For more information, visit www.penonfire.com.
Elyssa East is the author of the Boston Globe best seller, Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town. A New York Times Editors’ Choice selection, Dogtown won the 2010 L.L.Winship/PEN New England Award for best work of nonfiction and was named a “Must-Read Book” by the Massachusetts Book Awards. Her essays and reviews have been published in the New York Times, Philadelphia Enquirer, Dallas Morning News, Kansas City Star, and other publications nationwide.
Maggie Estep has published six books, including Hex, a New York Times Notable Book of 2003. Her work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies including: Brooklyn Noir, Queens Noir, Aloud: Voices form the Nuyorican Poets Café, The Best American Erotica, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, and The KGB Bar Reader. Maggie was coeditor, with Jason Starr, of Bloodlines:
Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of the award-winning and best-selling novels Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, as well as two works of nonfiction: Eating Animals and The New American Haggadah. His books have been published in over thirty languages, and he was included in Granta’s “Best of Young American Novelists” issue as well as the New Yorker’s “20 under 40” list of the best young writers in the US.
J. Malcolm Garcia is the author of The Khaarijee: A Chronicle of Friendship and War in Kabul and Riding through Katrina with the Red Baron’s Ghost. His articles have been featured in Best American Travel Writing and Best American Nonrequired Reading.
James W. Hall is the author of fourteen novels, including his most recent, Magic City.
James W. Hall is the author of fourteen novels, including his most recent, Magic City.
Pete Hamill was born in Brooklyn in 1935 and is, for many, the living embodiment of New York City. In his writing for the New York Daily News, the New York Post, and New York magazine, he has brought the city to life for millions of readers. He is the author of many best-selling books, including the novels Forever and Snow in August, as well the memoir A Drinking Life. He recently moved back to Brooklyn.
Pete Hamill was born in Brooklyn in 1935 and is, for many, the living embodiment of New York City. In his writing for the New York Daily News, the New York Post, and New York magazine, he has brought the city to life for millions of readers. He is the author of many best-selling books, including the novels Forever and Snow in August, as well the memoir A Drinking Life. He recently moved back to Brooklyn.
Karen Karbo is the author of three novels, all of which have been named New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Her memoir, The Stuff of Life, about the last year she spent with her father before his death, won an Oregon Book Award. Her short stories, essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in Elle, Vogue, Esquire, Outside, O, More, the New Republic, the New York Times, Salon, and other magazines. Karbo is well known for her best-selling Kick Ass Women Series, the most recent of which is How Georgia Became O’Keeffe, published in 2011.
Bharti Kirchner is the author of nine books—five critically acclaimed novels and four cookbooks. Her latest novel is Tulip Season: A Mitra Basu Mystery. Her essays have appeared in ten anthologies, and she has won numerous awards, including a VCCA (Virginia Center for Creative Arts) Fellowship and two Seattle Arts Commission literature grants.
William Kent Krueger writes the New York Times best-selling Cork O’Connor mystery series, which is set in the north woods of Minnesota. His work has received a number of awards, including the Minnesota Book Award, the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award, the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, and the Friends of American Writers Literary Award. He does all his writing in a St. Paul coffee shop whose identity he prefers to keep secret.
Dennis Lehane: Dennis Lehane is the author of the Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro mystery series (A Drink Before the War; Darkness, Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone Baby Gone; Prayers for Rain, and Moonlight Mile), as well as Coronado (five stories and a play) and the award-winning novels Mystic River, Shutter Island, and The Given Day. Mystic River, Shutter Island, and Gone Baby Gone have been made into award-winning films. In 2009, he edited the best-selling anthology Boston Noir for Akashic Books.
Mary Cotton: Mary Cotton is the pseudonymous author of nine novels for young adults, six of them New York Times bestsellers. She is also a fiction editor for the literary magazine, Post Road, and is coeditor of No Near Exit: Writers Select Their Favorite Work from Post Road. She is coowner of Newtonville Books, an independent bookstore in Boston.
Jaime Clarke: Jaime Clarke is the author of the novel We're So Famous, editor of Don't You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes, Conversations with Jonathan Lethem, and co-editor of No Near Exit: Writers Select Their Favorite Work from Post Road. He is a founding editor of Post Road and has taught creative writing at UMASS-Boston and Emerson College. He is coowner of Newtonville Books, an independent bookstore in Boston.
Laura Lippman is the award-winning writer of more than twenty crime-fiction novels. She lives in Baltimore and New Orleans with her husband, David Simon, and her very smart daughter, Georgia Rae.
Kate Samworth is a painter and illustrator from Maryland. Her paintings and prints have been exhibited around the country and abroad and can be found in the collections of the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, the Woodmere Museum of Art, the Fundación Lolita Rubial (Uruguay), and the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts. Her first book, Aviary Wonders Inc., won the Kirkus Prize for Young Readers in 2014.
Laura Lippman is the award-winning writer of more than twenty crime-fiction novels. She lives in Baltimore and New Orleans with her husband, David Simon, and her very smart daughter, Georgia Rae.
Kate Samworth is a painter and illustrator from Maryland. Her paintings and prints have been exhibited around the country and abroad and can be found in the collections of the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, the Woodmere Museum of Art, the Fundación Lolita Rubial (Uruguay), and the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts. Her first book, Aviary Wonders Inc., won the Kirkus Prize for Young Readers in 2014.
Tim McLoughlin was born and raised in Brooklyn. His debut novel, Heart of the Old Country (Akashic), was hailed as reminiscent of James T. Farrell's Studs Lonigan and George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris. He was editor of Brooklyn Noir, first in the Akashic Noir Series, as well as Brooklyn Noir 2 and Brooklyn Noir 3.
John O'Brien was born in 1960 and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. He moved to Los Angeles in 1982 with then-wife Lisa. During his lifetime, he was a busboy, file clerk, and coffee roaster, but writing was his true calling. He committed suicide in April 1994 at age 33.
Bayo Ojikutu was born and raised in greater Chicago. He is the son of folks who migrated to the city from West Africa (Lagos, Nigeria) and the Deep South (Shreveport, Louisiana). Ojikutu’s first novel, 47th Street Black (Three Rivers Press, 2003), won the Washington Prize for Fiction and the Great American Book Award. His second novel, Free Burning, will be released in 2006. Currently, Ojikutu teaches in the Department of English at DePaul University, Chicago.
T. Jefferson Parker was born in Los Angeles and has lived his life in Southern California. He is the author of nineteen crime novels, including the Edgar Award–winning Silent Joe and California Girl. His first book, Laguna Heat, was made into an HBO movie. His latest novel is The Famous and the Dead. He lives with his family in San Diego County.
George Pelecanos is an independent film producer, the recipient of numerous international writing awards, a producer and an Emmy-nominated writer on the HBO series The Wire, and the author of a fifteen novels set in and around Washington, D.C. He is the editor of the best-selling first volume of D.C. Noir.
Pir Rothenberg’s work has appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Dossier Journal, Harpur Palate, Juked, Makeout Creek, Overtime, Prick of the Spindle, Richmond Noir, River Styx, and Zahir. He is currently pursuing his PhD at Georgia State University.
SJ Rozan was born and raised in the Bronx and is a life-long New Yorker. She's the author of eight novels in the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series, and of the stand alones Absent Friends and In This Rain (forthcoming, Delacorte Jan. 2007). Her books have won Edgar, Nero, Macavity, and Shamus awards for Best Novel.
Lisa Sandlin was born in the Gulf Coast oil town of Beaumont, Texas. She’s the author of The Famous Thing About Death, Message to the Nurse of Dreams, In the River Province, You Who Make the Sky Bend, a collaboration with New Mexican santera Catherine Ferguson, and a coeditor of Times of Sorrow, Times of Grace. Her work has won numerous awards, including a Pushcart Prize and a Best Book of Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters. “Phelan’s First Case,” included in this volume, was a finalist for the 2011 Shamus Award.
Julie Smith is an Edgar Award winner for best novel, and the author of four mystery series set in New Orleans and San Francisco. A former journalist, she has worked for newspapers in both those cities and now lives in New Orleans. She is the owner of booksBnimble, which publishes mysteries and other quality works digitally. In 2007 Smith edited the best-selling anthology New Orleans Noir for Akashic Books.
Asali Solomon is the author of Get Down: Stories. Her work has been featured in the anthologies Philadelphia Noir, Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers on the Albums that Changed Their Lives, and Naked: Black Women Bare All About Their Skin, Hair, Hips, Lips, and Other Parts. She received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award in 2006 and was selected as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” in 2007. She is at work on a novel.
Domenic Stansberry is an award-winning novelist known for his dark, innovative crime novels. His North Beach Mystery Series has won praise in the New York Times and other publications for its rich portrayal of the ethnic and political subcultures in San Francisco. An earlier novel, The Confession, received an Edgar Award for its controversial portrait of a Marin County psychologist accused of murdering his mistress.
Susan Straight was born in Riverside, where she still lives with her family. She has published six novels. Her latest, A Million Nightingales (Pantheon, 2006), set during slavery, is the first of a trilogy about the characters who appear in “The Golden Gopher.”
Luis Alberto Urrea, Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the Edgar Award for the short story “Amapola” (included in this volume), is the best-selling author of fourteen books, including Queen of America, Into the Beautiful North, The Hummingbird’s Daughter, and The Devil’s Highway. Recipient of an American Book Award, a Kiriyama Pacific Rim Prize, a Lannan Literary Award, and a member of the Latino Literary Hall of Fame, Urrea lives with his family in Naperville, Illinois, where he is a distinguished professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois–Chicago.
Don Winslow is the New York Times best-selling author of more than a dozen novels, including Savages, The Power of the Dog, The Kings of Cool, California Fire and Life, The Winter of Frankie Machine, and Satori. Savages was made into a critically acclaimed film for Universal Pictures by three-time Oscar winner Oliver Stone. Winslow has received numerous awards for his writing, including the prestigious Raymond Chandler Award as one of the most significant figures in American literature
