About the Contributors
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Kenneth Abel is the author of the highly praised Bait and The Blue Wall. Down in the Flood is his third in the critically acclaimed Danny Chaisson thriller series; previous titles include Cold Steel Rain and The Burying Field. He lives in Columbus, Ohio.
Linda Barnes, winner of Anthony and American Mystery awards, has written seventeen novels, twelve featuring 6'1" redheaded Boston private investigator Carlotta Carlyle. Her most recent Carlyle novel, Lie Down with the Devil, was named one of the best mysteries of 2008 by Publishers Weekly. The Perfect Ghost, a nonseries novel, will be published in 2013.
Jason Brown is the author of two books of short stories, Driving the Heart and Other Stories and Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work. His short fiction has appeared in Harper's, the Atlantic, Best American Short Stories, NPR's Selected Shorts, and many journals and anthologies. He teaches in the MFA program at the University of Oregon.
Jaime Clarke is the author of the novel We're So Famous; editor of Don't You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes and Conversations with Jonathan Lethem; and coeditor of No Near Exit: Writers Select Their Favorite Work from Post Road Magazine. He is a founding editor of the literary magazine Post Road and has taught creative writing at UMASS-Boston and Emerson College. He is co-owner of Newtonville Books, an independent bookstore in Boston.
Mary Cotton is the pseudonymous author of nine novels for young adults, six of them New York Times best sellers. She is also a fiction editor for the literary magazine Post Road, and is coeditor of No Near Exit: Writers Select Their Favorite Work from Post Road Magazine. She is co-owner of Newtonville Books, an independent bookstore in Boston.
Andre Dubus (1936–1999) is considered one of the greatest American short story writers of the twentieth century. Over an illustrious career, he wrote a total of six collections of short fiction, two collections of essays, one novel, and a stand-alone novella. He was awarded the Boston Globe's Lawrence L. Winship Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, the Rea Award for the Short Story, and the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
George Harrar is the author of the literary mystery The Spinning Man, described by the New York Times as "elegant and unnerving." Among his dozen published short stories, "The 5:22" won the Carson McCullers Prize and was selected for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 1999. In 2013, Other Press will publish his psychological drama Reunion at Red Paint Bay. Harrar lives west of Boston with his wife, Linda, a documentary filmmaker.
George V. Higgins (1939–1999) was the author of more than twenty novels, including the best sellers The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Cogan's Trade, The Rat on Fire, and The Digger's Game. He was a reporter for the Providence Journal and the Associated Press before obtaining a law degree from Boston College Law School in 1967. He was assistant attorney general and then an assistant US attorney in Boston from 1969 to 1973. He later taught creative writing at Boston University.
Chuck Hogan is the New York Times best-selling author of several acclaimed novels, including Devils in Exile and Prince of Thieves, which was awarded the Hammett Prize and was adapted into the Oscar-nominated film The Town. His nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times and ESPN The Magazine, and his short fiction has twice been anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories. He lives outside Boston with his family.
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. In 2009, he edited the best-selling anthology Boston Noir for Akashic Books.
Barbara Neely writes novels, short stories, and plays wherever she can. Her first novel in the Blanche White series won three of the four major mystery awards for best first novel. Neely's short stories have appeared in anthologies, magazines, university texts, and journals. She is currently working on a stand-alone novel and a play.
Joyce Carol Oates, editor of New Jersey Noir (2011), is the author most recently of the story collection The Corn Maiden (Mysterious Press) and the novel Mudwoman (Ecco/ HarperCollins). Her earliest fascination with Boston and its historic environs sprang from her experience as a nineteen-year-old undergraduate in the Harvard Summer School, living in an antiquated residence in the Harvard Yard during a particularly hot and torpid summer some decades ago.
Robert B. Parker (1932–2010) was the author of seventy books, including the legendary Spenser detective series, the novels featuring Jesse Stone, and the acclaimed Virgil Cole–Everett Hitch westerns, as well as the Sunny Randall novels. Winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award and long considered the undisputed dean of American crime fiction, he died in January 2010.
David Ryan's fiction has appeared in BOMB, NERVE, Mississippi Review, Denver Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Tin House, Alaska Quarterly Review, New Orleans Review, Hobart, 5_Trope, and the W. W. Norton anthology Flash Fiction Forward, among others. He is a recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship and a recent arts grant from the state of Connecticut.
Hannah Tinti grew up in Salem, Massachusetts. She is the author of a story collection, Animal Crackers (which includes "Home Sweet Home"), and a novel, The Good Thief. She is also cofounder and editor in chief of One Story magazine. Recently, she joined the National Public Radio program Selected Shorts, as their literary commentator.
David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) wrote the novels The Pale King, Infinite Jest, and The Broom of the System, as well as the story collections Oblivion, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, and Girl with Curious Hair. His nonfiction includes Consider the Lobster, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Everything and More, and This Is Water.