Indian Country Noir

About the contributors

Mistina Bates is a transplanted Texan and freelance writer living outside New York City. She is the great-great-granddaughter of a full-blooded member of the Cherokee Nation who served as a Texas Ranger.

Jean Rae Baxter’s award-winning short stories have appeared in various anthologies and literary journals. Her debut collection of stories, A Twist of Malice, was published in 2005, and her young adult historical novel, The Way Lies North, was published in 2007. In 2008, Seraphim Editions released her literary murder mystery, Looking for Cardenio. Her ancestry is German, French, English, and Pottawatami.

Lawrence Block has won most of the major mystery awards, and has been called the quintessential New York writer, although he insists the city’s far too big to have a quintessential writer. His series characters — Matthew Scudder, Bernie Rhodenbatt, Evan Tanner, Chip Harrison, and Keller — all live in Manhattan; like their creator, they wouldn’t really be happy anywhere else.

Joseph Bruchac, an author of Abenaki, Slovak, and English descent, has edited a number of highly praised anthologies of poetry and fiction. His poems, articles, and stories have appeared in over 500 publications, and his honors include the Cherokee Nation Prose Award, a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship for Poetry. In 1999, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas.

David Cole has published seven mystery novels set in southern Arizona, dealing largely with problems facing Native Americans and illegal immigrants. His next fiction project, set in Tucson, involves Mexican drug cartels and home invasions. He is also collecting real-life personal stories from women in all phases of law enforcement for a nonfiction book.

Reed Farrel Coleman is the former executive vice-president of Mystery Writers of America and has published ten novels — two under his pen name Tony Spinosa — in three series. His eleventh novel, Tower, co-written with award-winning Irish author Ken Bruen, was released in 2009. Reed has been nominated for two Edgar Awards and has been the recipient of three Shamus Awards. He is also an adjunct professor in creative writing at Hofstra University.

Sarah Cortez is the author of the acclaimed poetry collection How to Undress a Cop. Winner of the 1999 PEN Texas Literary Award in poetry, she has edited Urban-Speak: Poetry of the City and Windows into My World: Latino Youth Write Their Lives, which won the 2008 Skipping Stones Honor Award. She also coedited, with Liz Martínez, Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery. Cortez has been a police officer since 1993. Her blood is Spanish, Mexican, French, and Comanche.

O’Neil De Noux was born in New Orleans. He writes in multiple genres and has published five novels and six short story collections. His story “The Heart Has Reasons” won a Shamus Award in 2007, and his story “Too Wise” won a Derringer Award in 2009. He received the Artist Services Career Advancement Award for 2009–10 from the Louisiana Division of the Arts for work on his forthcoming historical novel set during the Battle of New Orleans.

A. A. Hedgecoke holds the Paul W. Reynolds and Clarice Kingston Reynolds Endowed Chair of Poetry and Writing at the University of Nebraska, Kearney. Her books include Dog Road Woman — winner of the American Book Award — Off-Season City Pipe, Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer, and Blood Run. HedgeCoke is from Huron and Cherokee heritage.

Gerard Houarner lives in the Bronx and works at a psychiatric institution. He has published hundreds of short stories, several novels and story collections, and has edited two anthologies. His most recent books include the story collections The Oz Suite and A Blood of Killers and the novel Road from Hell.

Liz Martínez is of Guachichil (Mexican Indian) heritage. She is a recognized medicine woman and ordained clergy in a Native American church. She combines her spiritual mediumship abilities with her experience as a New York State investigator to assist individuals and police as a forensic psychic. With Sarah Cortez, she has edited the mystery anthology Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery, and is the author of numerous short stories.

R. Narvaez was born and raised in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, of Puerto Rican parents with Taino ancestry. His work has been published in Mississippi Review, Murdaland, Thrilling Detective, and in the anthology Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery. He is coeditor of The Lineup crime poetry chapbook series.

Kimberly Roppolo, of Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek descent, is a visiting assistant professor of Native Studies at the University of Oklahoma and the national director of the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. She won the Native Writers Circle of the Americas First Book Award for Prose 2004 for Back to the Blanket: Reading, Writing, and Resistance for American Indian Literary Critics.

Leonard Schonberg, who died of lung cancer in 2008, has had five novels published by Sunstone Press: Deadly Indian Summer, Fish Heads, Legacy, Morgen’s War, and Blackfeet Eyes. Schonberg has also had articles published in Boston Magazine, Yankee Magazine, and Medical Economics.

Melissa Yi works as an emergency room physician in Cornwall, Ontario. Her award-winning short stories have appeared in fine venues such as Nature, Weird Tales, and Open Space: A Canadian Anthology of Fantastic Fiction under the name Melissa Yuan-Innes. She also writes for the Medical Post.