Tim McLoughlin is the editor of Brooklyn Noir and its companion volumes. His debut novel Heart of the Old Country is the basis for the motion picture The Narrows, starring Vincent D’Onofrio. His books have been published in seven languages, and his writing has appeared in New York Quarterly, the Huffington Post, and Best American Mystery Stories. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, where he still resides.
Pearl Abraham is the author of the novels The Romance Readerand Giving Up America. Recent essays have appeared in the Michigan Quarterly, the Forward, and Dog Culture: Writers on the Character of Canines. Abraham teaches in the MFA Writing Program at Sarah Lawrence College. The Seventh Beggar, her third novel, will be published in September 2004.
Nicole Blackman is a New York City–born performance artist, poet, author, vocalist, teacher, and former music industry publicist. Her writing has appeared in numerous anthologies including Brooklyn Noir, Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Verses That Hurt, and Poetry Nation. Her work as a performance artist includes Bloodwork, The Courtesan Tales, Harm’s Way, and Beloved. Blackman has performed on over fifteen albums, including recordings with Golden Palominos, KMFDM, Recoil, Bill Laswell, and Scanner. She is also a voiceover performer, heard regularly on a slew of commercials and channels, including Saturday Night Live and major campaigns for Chrysler, Ford, Lysol, and Verizon, and TV stations including Turner Classic Movies, Discovery Health Channel, Cartoon Network, Court TV, and PBS.
Nelson George is an author, filmmaker, and lifelong resident of Brooklyn. His novels include the first two in his D Hunter mystery series, The Accidental Hunter and The Plot Against Hip Hop. Among his many nonfiction works are The Death of Rhythm & Blues, Hip Hop America, the recently published The Hippest Trip in America: Soul Train and the Evolution of Culture & Style, and City Kid, his memoir. As a filmmaker he's directed the documentaries Brooklyn Boheme for Revolt, The Announcement for ESPN, and Finding the Funk for VH1. The Lost Treasures of R&B, the third book in his D Hunter mystery series, is his latest novel.
Luciano Guerriero, a contributor to Akashic’s Brooklyn Noir, recently completed his first noir novel, The Spin. His fourth play, Fireman’s Dance, will be produced in New York City in the fall of 2005. Luciano has acted in or directed seventy-five plays, and has appeared in twenty Hollywood and independent films, and in many television shows.
Pete Hamill is a veteran journalist and novelist. He is the author of seventeen books, including the best-selling A Drinking Life and a new story collection, The Christmas Kid. His nine novels include the New York Times best sellers Snow in August, Tabloid City, and Forever. He has covered wars in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Lebanon, and Northern Ireland, as well as the domestic disturbances in American cities in the 1960s. In addition to his many years as a columnist, he has served as editor in chief of the New York Post and the New York Daily News. He divides his time between New York City and Cuernavaca, Mexico.
Kenji Jasper wrote the best-selling novel Dark in Atlanta just after finishing his degree at Morehouse College. His articles for Creative Loafing, Upscale, and Rappages helped to take the careers of groups like Outkast, Goodie Mob, and Arrested Development national. His novel Cake, written under the pseudonym D, takes place on his college stomping grounds. Jasper’s next novel, Nostrand Avenue, will be published by Kensington Books in 2018. He lives in Los Angeles.
Norman Kelley is the author of the “noir soul” Nina Halligan mystery series, which includes Black Heat, The Big Mango, and A Phat Death. He is also the author of Head Negro in Charge Syndrome, forthcoming from Nation Books, and he edited and contributed to R&B (Rhythm and Business): The Political Economy of Black Music (Akashic, 2002). He currently resides in Brooklyn.
Adam Mansbach is the author of the #1 New York Times best seller Go the Fuck to Sleep, the novels Rage Is Back, Angry Black White Boy, and The End of the Jews, (winner of the California Book Award), and a dozen other books, most recently the best-selling A Field Guide to the Jewish People, cowritten with Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel. Mansbach wrote the award-winning screenplay for the Netflix Original Barry, and his next feature film, Super High, starring Andy Samberg, Craig Robinson, and Common, is forthcoming from New Line. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, Esquire, the Believer, the Guardian, and on National Public Radio's This American Life, The Moth, and All Things Considered.
Ricardo Cortés illustrated Go the Fuck to Sleep and its companions Go de Rass to Sleep and Seriously, Just Go to Sleep. He also illustrated Party: A Mystery by Jamaica Kincaid, and is the author/illustrator of It's Just a Plant: A Children's Story about Marijuana; A Secret History of Coffee, Coca & Cola; and Sea Creatures from the Sky.
Owen Brozman illustrates comics, advertisements, album covers, magazines, murals, books, and more. In addition to You Have to Fucking Eat and Fuck, Now There Are Two of You, his work includes Kindness & Salt, a cookbook by the team behind Brooklyn's Buttermilk Channel, and the graphic novel Nature of the Beast. Brozman lives in Brooklyn.
Ellen Miller is the author of the critically acclaimed bestseller Like Being Killed. Her fiction and essays have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies, most recently Lost Tribe: Jewish Fiction from the Edge. She has taught creative writing at New York University, the New School, and the women’s unit of a federal prison. She lives in New York City and is at work on her second novel.
Thomas Morrissey is an Army brat who grew up in exotic locations like Okinawa, Heidelberg, and Staten Island. He began writing when, as a child, he found great pleasure playing with his mother’s Sears portable typewriter. His first novel, Faustus Resurrectus, is on the way.
ARTHUR NERSESIAN is the author of fourteen books, including the cult-classic national best seller The Fuck-Up (more than 100,000 copies sold), Suicide Casanova, Manhattan Loverboy, East Village Tetralogy, and Mesopotamia. He is a native New Yorker who runs a writing workshop in the East Village and can be reached on Facebook.
Sidney Offit is a novelist, author of books for young readers, teacher, member of the board of the PEN American Center, president of the Authors Guild Foundation, and curator of the George Polk Journalism Awards that originate from Long Island University’s Brooklyn center. During the mid-fifties he covered the Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants, and that other team from New York for Baseball Magazine. His most recent book is Memoir of the Bookie’s Son.
Neal Pollack, “The Greatest Living American Writer,” is the author of 10 previously published books of fiction and nonfiction, including the bestselling memoirs Alternadad and Stretch, the cult classic The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, the novels Never Mind The Pollacks, Jewball, Repeat, and Keep Mars Weird, and Downward-Facing Death and Open Your Heart, a pair of “yoga mysteries.” Pollack is currently the editor-in-chief of Book and Film Globe. His 25-year freelance writing credits include a column in Vanity Fair, as well as GQ, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Men’s Journal, Slate, Salon, Nerve, The Federalist, The Drive, Yahoo!, Esquire, The Jewish Daily Forward, Decider, and many other publications large and small. A three-time Jeopardy! Champion, a former correspondent for The Cannabist, and a certified yoga instructor, Pollack lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife (the painter Regina Allen), their son Elijah, and a Boston Terrier named Briar.
C.J. Sullivan’s idol growing up was Chicago Cub legend Billy Williams. He works by day as a Court Clerk in Brooklyn Supreme and by night as a reporter for the New York Post. The two loves in his life are his twin girls: Luisa Marie and Olivia Kathleen Sullivan. He lives in New York City.