Elyssa East is the author of the Boston Globe best-selling book, 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. East's essays and reviews have been published in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Kansas City Star, and other publications nationwide.
Maggie Estep has published seven books and recorded two spoken-word CDs. She has been a horse groom and a go-go dancer and is a pit bull advocate. Estep's books have been translated into four languages, optioned for film, and frequently stolen from libraries. She is presently working on two books and a TV show. Her short story included in this volume was adapted into a novel by the same name: Alice Fantastic. Estep lives in Hudson, New York.
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 four books of poetry, a collection of short stories, a collection of essays, and seventeen novels. His most recent work is Hit Lit, a nonfiction examination of the dozen most successful best sellers of the twentieth century and the common features they share. He was a Fulbright professor of literature in Spain and a professor of literature and writing at Florida International University for thirty-five years. Hall has won both the Edgar and Shamus awards. He and his wife Evelyn and their three dogs divide their time between South Florida and the mountains of western North Carolina.
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.
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 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 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 novels Mystic River, Shutter Island, The Given Day, and Live By Night. Three of his novels have been made into award-winning films. He edited the best-selling anthology Boston Noir and coedited Boston Noir 2: The Classics for Akashic Books.
Laura Lippman has published eighteen novels, a novella, and a book of short stories, and she edited Baltimore Noir for Akashic Books. Her work has been nominated for virtually every award open to North American crime writers and has won most of them, including the Edgar, Anthony, Quill, Nero Wolfe, and Agatha awards. Lippman lives in Baltimore and New Orleans.
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.
Joyce Carol Oates, who edited New Jersey Noir for Akashic Books, is the author of a number of works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including the novels Mudwoman, Little Bird of Heaven, and Blonde. Her collections of short fiction include High Lonesome: New and Selected Short Stories 1966–2006, Black Dahlia & White Rose, and The Corn Maiden. She is the 2011 recipient of the president's National Humanities Medal, the 2012 recipient of the Norman Mailer Prize for Lifetime Achievement, and she won the PEN Center USA Award for Lifetime Achievement.