J. M. Curet (aka Jose Martinez) is a poet, writer, member of the Berkeley Writers Circle, and current student at the Writers Studio San Francisco. His short stories include “Wifebeater Tank Top” and “Papi’s Stroke,” for which he received an honorable mention for Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers in 2018. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where he teaches high school English and lends his voice to several local salsa bands.
Aya de León teaches creative writing at UC Berkeley. Her 2020 novel Operation HOLOGRAM explores FBI infiltration of African American organizations. Her previous works include Side Chick Nation, the first novel published about Hurricane Maria. She is currently working on a black/Latina spy-girl YA series called Going Dark, and writes about race, class, gender, and culture at @AyadeLeon and ayadeleon.com.
Susan Dunlap is the author of twenty-five mystery novels, featuring San Francisco stunt double and Zen student Darcy Lott, Berkeley police officer Jill Smith, forensic pathologist — cum — private investigator Kiernan o’shaughnessy, and PG&E meter reader Vejay Haskell, She has also written many short stories and a suspense novel, Fast Friends. Dunlap has taught hatha yoga, worked as a paralegal, and been on the private investigative defense team in a capital murder case.
Barry Gifford is a recipient of NoirCon’s Anne Friedberg Award, and was the founder of the original Black Lizard Books, for which he was given the Maxwell E. Perkins Award by PEN West. He is the author of the world-famous novel Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula, among many other books, and cowrote the screenplay for the film Lost Highway.
Owen Hill is the author of two crime novels, The Chandler Apartments and The Incredible Double, and he coedited the Annotated Big Sleep with Pamela Jackson and Anthony Rizzuto. Until recently he lived in the Chandler Building on the corner of Telegraph and Dwight in Berkeley.
Mara Faye Lethem’s work has recently appeared in the New York Times Book Review, BOMB, and A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader, a best-selling collection of letters and illustrations. Her forthcoming translations include novels by Patricio Pron, Max Besora, Javier Calvo, and Marta Orriols. She splits her time between Brooklyn and Barcelona.
Michael David Lukas is the author of the international best seller The Oracle of Stamboul, a finalist for the California Book Award, the NCIBA Book of the Year Award, and winner of the Harold U. Ribalow Prize. His second novel, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo, won the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction and the ALa’s Sophie Brody Medal. He was born in Berkeley, lives in Oakland, and teaches at San Francisco State University.
Nick Mamatas is the author of several novels, including the Lovecraftian murder mystery I Am Providence and the supernatural thriller Sabbath. His short fiction has appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including The Best American Mystery Stories and The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy. Mamatas’s fiction and editorial work have been nominated for the Hugo, Bram Stoker, Locus, and World Fantasy awards.
Kimn Neilson is a longtime Berkeley bookseller and editor. Her translations of the poet C.P. Cavafy appeared in TRY! and an article on Elizabeth David in PekoPeko. “Still Life, Reviving” is an offshoot of a longer piece she is working on about Berkeley in the years 1980 and 2000.
Jim Nisbet has published twenty books, including the classic noir title Lethal Injection; six volumes of poetry; and a single nonfiction title, Laminating the Conic Frustum. Current projects include a fourteenth novel, You Don’t Pencil, and a complete translation of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal.
Lexi Pandell is a freelance writer and former Wired editor from Oakland. Her nonfiction work has been published by the New York Times, the Atlantic, Condé Nast Traveler, GQ, Playboy, Creative Nonfiction, and others. She is an alumna of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and was recently awarded the Wellstone Center’s Emerging Writer Residency for her novel-in-progress. She also hosts Desert Salon, an annual writing retreat in Joshua Tree, California.
Jason S. Ridler is a historian and writer. He is the author of the Brimstone Files series, over sixty short stories, and several works of military history. A former punk rock musician and cemetery groundskeeper, he is a teaching fellow at Johns Hopkins University and a creative writing instructor at Google, YouTube, and other locations. Ridler is currently working on his forthcoming book, Harvest of Blood and Iron.
Shanthi Sekaran is a writer and educator in Berkeley. Her latest novel, Lucky Boy, was named an Indie Next Great Read and an NPR Best Book of 2017. Her essays and stories have also appeared in the New York Times, Salon, and the LA Review of Books. She’s a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, an AWP mentor, and teaches writing at Mills College.
Jerry Thompson is a bookseller, poet, playwright, and musican. His work has appeared Zyzzyva and the James White Review. He is the coauthor of Images of America: Black Artists in Oakland. His fiction and prose have appeared in various anthologies including Voices Rising, edited by G. Winston James, and Freedom in this Village: Twenty-Five Years of Black Gay Men’s Writing, edited by E. Lynn Harris. He is the coeditor of Oakand Noir.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Liz Leger, Zelda, to the editors and publishers at the late, great Creative Arts/Black Lizard for reprinting the best of classic noir, and to Moe’s Books, Berkeley’s Taj Mahal.
— O.H.
Thanks to composer Milo Francis, my best friend. Thank you, man, for the soundtrack recording for Oakland Noir. Thanks to Rick Moss and Veda Silva with the African American Museum and Library at Oakland. To Calvin Crosby and the wonderful team at NCIBA, and to all the independent booksellers, for their support. Special thanks to Maria San Antonio and Bill Barham, for always having my back, and for the fried chicken. To Zach Embry, for all the inspirations and conversations. To Foster Douglas for overseeing the web and social media, and for the groovy Piedmont Avenue sound system. To Alice De Parres and Michael Ross, my angel network! Thanks to Bonnie and Michael Stuppin of the Alexander Book Company, for your incredible support and care. Thank you, Michael Calvello, for allowing our time together at Owl & Company to be so life-changing and rewarding. And thanks to Johnny Temple, for believing in me, a bookseller with a dream.
— J.T.