USA Noir

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.

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.

Joseph Bruchac’s work, like the story in this collection, often reflects his Abenaki Indian ancestry and his deep interest in the history of the Adirondack Mountain region of upstate New York, where he was born—and still resides (in the house where his grandparents raised him).

Jerome Charyn is the author of more than fifty works of fiction and nonfiction, including Sergeant Salinger; 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.

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.

Terrance Hayes is the 2010 recipient of the National Book Award in poetry. His most recent collection is Lighthead. His other books are Wind in a Box, Muscular Music, and Hip Logic. His honors include four Best American Poetry selections, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a professor of creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University and lives in Pittsburgh.

Karen Karbo is the author of How to Hepburn: Lessons on Living from Kate the Great. Her three novels have all been named New York Times Notable Books of the Year; The Stuff of Life, her memoir about her father, was a People Magazine Critic’s Pick and winner of the Oregon Book Award. Her many essays, reviews, and articles have appeared in Outside, Elle, Vogue, , , More, Self, Sports Illustrated for Women, Entertainment Weekly, the New Republic, the New York Times, and Salon.com.

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.

Tim McLoughlin is the editor of the multiple award–winning anthologies Brooklyn Noir and Brooklyn Noir 2, and coeditor of Brooklyn Noir 3. His debut novel, Heart of the Old Country, was a selection of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers program, won Italy's Premio Penne award, and was the basis for the motion picture The Narrows, starring Vincent D'Onofrio and Sophia Bush. His books have been published in seven languages and his writing has appeared in the New York Times and Huffington Post, and has been included in The Best American Mystery Stories. McLoughlin retired after working for thirty years as a peace officer in the New York City criminal justice system, and divides his time between Brooklyn and Eastern Pennsylvania.

Joyce Carol Oates is the author of a number of works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. She is the editor of New Jersey Noir and Prison Noir and a recipient of the National Book Award, the PEN America Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Humanities Medal, and a World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey, and was recently inducted into the American Philosophical Society.

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.

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.

Lisa Sandlin was born in Beaumont, Texas, and grew up in oil-refinery air, sixty miles from the Gulf of Mexico. She raised a son in Santa Fe, New Mexico, then taught writing at the University of Nebraska for twenty years. She has since returned to Santa Fe. The Do-Right—her first novel—won the 2015 Hammett Award from the IACW/NA and the Best First Private Eye Prize from the Seamus Awards.

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.”

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