ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Jedidiah Ayres is a preacher’s kid, high school graduate, and the author of some books. No awards, no convictions.

Chris Barsanti is the author of Filmology, The Sci-Fi Movie Guide, and the Eyes Wide Open film guide series, and a contributor to Punk Rock Warlord: The Life and Works of Joe Strummer. His writing has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Playboy, the Millions, PopMatters, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Film Journal. He is partial to Schlafly Pale Ale.

Laura Benedict is the author of five novels of dark suspense, including Charlotte’s Story and Bliss House, the first books of the Bliss House trilogy. Her work has also appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, PANK, and numerous anthologies like The Lineup: 20 Provocative Women Writers. She lives with her family in Southern Illinois. For more information, visit laurabenedict.com.

Michael Castro, called “a legend in St. Louis poetry” by Charles Guenther in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, is a widely published poet and translator. How Things Stack Up is his fifteenth book. Castro is the recipient of the Guardian Angel of St. Louis Poetry Award from River Styx and the Warrior Poet Award from Word in Motion, both for lifetime achievement. In 2015, he was named St. Louis’s first poet laureate.

S.L. Coney, whose formative years were spent bouncing around the United States, is proud to call St. Louis home. Coney’s short story “Dead By Dawn” appeared in Noir at the Bar, Volume 2.

Umar Lee is a St. Louis–based writer, activist, cabbie, wrestling enthusiast, and father of two. He has previously published two novels, Tea Party Twelver and the Muslim Brothers and Dunya Dust. His work has also appeared in the Guardian, Politico, and Quartz, amongst other publications. He appeared frequently on MSNBC, Al Jazeera, and Press TV discussing the Ferguson protests after the murder of Michael Brown. Presently he’s a candidate for mayor of St. Louis.

John Lutz is the author of more than forty-five novels and 225 short stories. His thriller Single White Female was made into the movie of the same title, starring Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh. He has received an Edgar Award and two Shamus Awards, as well as the Private Eye Writers of America Lifetime Achievement Award. Lutz and his wife Barbara split their time between St. Louis, Missouri and Sarasota, Florida.

Jason Makansi's short stories have appeared in the Dos Passos Review, Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley, Marginalia, Mizna: Prose, Poetry, and Art Exploring Arab America, Rainbow Curve, Arabesques, Noir at the Bar 2, and other publications. He is an associate editor for December literary magazine and cofounded Blank Slate Press (now Amphorae Publishing Group). He recently completed his first novel, The Moment Before.

Paul D. Marks is the author of the Shamus Award–winning noir mystery-thriller White Heat. His story “Howling at the Moon” was short-listed for both the 2015 Anthony and Macavity awards for Best Short Story. Midwest Review calls Marks’s noir novella Vortex “a nonstop staccato action noir.” He also coedited the anthology Coast to Coast: Murder from Sea to Shining Sea.

Colleen J. McElroy is the winner of the Before Columbus American Book Award for her book Queen of the Ebony Isles. Her most recent collection of poems, Sleeping with the Moon, received a 2008 PEN/Oakland National Literary Award, and Here I Throw Down My Heart was a finalist for the Binghamton University Milt Kessler Book Award, the Walt Whitman Award, the Phyllis Wheatley Award, and the Washington State Governor’s Book Award. She lives in Seattle, Washington.

Scott Phillips was born in Wichita, Kansas, and lived for many years in Paris (France) and Southern California. In the early 2000s he moved to St. Louis. He is the author of seven novels and a collection of short stories, and his novel The Ice Harvest was made into a film in 2005, directed by Harold Ramis and starring John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, and Connie Nielsen.

L.J. Smith is a writer and producer of theatrical and community affairs productions. She is the founder and executive director of A Call to Conscience, Inc., a theater collective that dramatizes historical themes dealing with the struggles of the oppressed. Smith has had poetry published in Sisters-Nineties Literary Magazine, and Drumvoices Revue. Her poem “City of the Century” was selected for inclusion in the 2009 Metro Arts in Transit’s Poetry in Motion program.

LaVelle Wilkins-Chinn, a native of St. Louis, is the dramaturge for A Call to Conscience (c2c), a St. Louis­–based theater collective, and has performed with several theater companies including the St. Louis Black Repertory Company and Pamoja Theatre Workshop. Her fiction has been included in The Hoot and Holler of the Owls, a Hurston-Wright anthology, Arts Today, an online St. Louis e-zine, and her poetry has been featured in Drum Voices Revue, a multicultural arts periodical.

Calvin Wilson is an arts and entertainment writer who has worked at the Kansas City Star and, currently, at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Wilson is also creator and host of Somethin’ Else, a jazz program on the Radio Arts Foundation radio station in St. Louis.