Marcia Muller, a native of the Detroit area, has authored thirty-five novels, three of them in collaboration with her husband Bill Pronzini; seven short story collections; and numerous nonfiction articles. Together she and Pronzini have edited a dozen anthologies and a nonfiction book on the mystery genre. The Mulzinis, as friends call them, live in Sonoma County, California, in a house full of books.
Frank Norris (1870–1902) was born in Chicago and moved to San Francisco at the age of fourteen. After attending Berkeley and Harvard, Norris embarked on an expansive writing career as a news correspondent in South Africa, an editorial assistant for the San Francisco Wave, and a war correspondent for McClure’s Magazine during the Spanish — American War in 1898. Heavily influenced by French naturalism, Norris’s most notable work, McTeague (1899), explores the life and trials of a dentist at the dawn of twentieth-century America in the city of San Francisco. McTeague has also been captured in different film versions and as an opera. His other works include The Octopus: A Story of California (1901) and The Pit (1903).
Oscar Peñaranda left the Philippines at the age of twelve. He spent his adolescent years in Vancouver, Canada, and then moved to San Francisco at the age of seventeen. His stories, poems, and essays have been anthologized both nationally and internationally. He is the author of Full Deck (Jokers Playing), a collection of poetry, and Seasons by the Bay, an award-winning story collection.
Bill Pronzini has published seventy novels, including three in collaboration with his wife, novelist Marcia Muller, and thirty-three in his popular Nameless Detective Series. He is also the author of four nonfiction books, twenty collections of short stories, and scores of uncollected stories, articles, essays, and book reviews; additionally, he has edited and coedited numerous anthologies. His work has been translated into eighteen languages and published in nearly thirty countries. In 2008 he was named a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, the organization’s highest award. He has also received three Shamus Awards, the Lifetime Achievement Award (presented in 1987) from the Private Eye Writers of America, and six Edgar Award nominations.
John Shirley is the author of numerous novels, including Cellars, Wetbones, City Come A-Walkin’, Eclipse, A Splendid Chaos, and, most recently, The Other End. He was coscreenwriter of the film The Crow, and his recent novel Demons is in development as a movie at the Weinstein Company.
Mark Twain (1835–1910), born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, is among the finest contributors to the canon of American literature. He began to gain fame when his story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” appeared in the New York Saturday Press in 1865. His book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) is widely considered the Great American Novel. Its predecessor, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), is also remarkable for Twain’s play with language and his attention to the innocence and imagination of childhood. Twain’s literary career evolved when he headed west for San Francisco. There he continued as a journalist, began lecturing and met his wife, Olivia Langdon.
William T. Vollmann was born in Los Angeles in 1959 and attended Deep Springs College and Cornell University. He is the author of various books, including The Atlas (winner of the 1997 PEN Center West Award), You Bright and Risen Angels, The Rainbow Stories, and a series of novels entitled Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes. In addition, Vollmann’s works of nonfiction include An Afghanistan Picture Show and Rising Up and Rising Down, a seven-volume treatise on violence that was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2003. His journalism and fiction have been published in the New Yorker, Esquire, Spin, Gear, and Granta. In 1999, the New Yorker named Vollmann “one of the twenty best writers in America under forty.” His most recent work, Riding Toward Everywhere, was published in 2008 to great critical acclaim. He lives in California with his wife and daughter.