San Francisco Noir

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

ROBERT MAILER ANDERSON was born in San Francisco in 1968. He finished his first novel, Boonville, in a hotel room in North Beach while jocking coffee at Caffe Trieste. He now lives with his wife and three children in Pacific Heights above a robot, and is a board member of SFJAZZ and the S.F. Opera Association.

WILL CHRISTOPHER BAER is the author of the Phineas Poe trilogy: Kiss Me, Judas, Penny Dreadful, and Hell’s Half Acre, to be released in omnibus edition fall 2005 by MacAdam/Cage. He lives in California. For more, see will-christopherbaer.com.

KATE BRAVERMAN first came to San Francisco as a runaway in 1965. She has written four novels (including Lithium for Medea and Palm Latitudes), four books of poetry, and two collections of short stories, mostly set in a California that doesn’t appear on the postcards. She is the recipient of many awards and fellowships for both her fiction and nonfiction. Braverman currently lives in Russian Hill with her husband.

DAVID CORBETT was an operative for the San Francisco private investigation firm of Palladino & Sutherland for fifteen years. His first book, The Devil’s Redhead, was nominated for the Barry and Anthony Awards for Best First Novel of 2002, and his second, Done for a Dime, was nominated for the Macavity Award for Best Novel of 2003 and was named a New York Times Notable Book. He lives in dismay.

BARRY GIFFORD, a novelist (Wild at Heart, Wyoming), poet (Back in America), and screenwriter (Lost Highway, City of Ghosts) has resided in or around San Francisco for thirty-five years. “After Hours at La Chinita” is an excerpt from his forthcoming book, The Stars Above Veracruz. For more information please visit www.BarryGifford.com.

JON LONGHI is the author of five books: Bricks and Anchors, The Rise and Fall of Third Leg, Everyone at the Funeral Was Slam Dancing, Flashbacks and Premonitions, and Wake Up and Smell the Beer. He has been published in numerous anthologies and has performed his work throughout the United States in cafés, bookstores, libraries, and nightclubs. He lives in San Francisco.

ALVIN LU was born in San Francisco. He wrote the “City God” column for the San Francisco Bay Guardian for several years and is also the author of a novel, The Hell Screens, published by Four Walls Eight Windows.

PETER MARAVELIS has been a bookseller for over fifteen years. He is currently the events coordinator for City Lights Bookstore. He was born and raised in San Francisco where he currently lives.

EDDIE MULLER is a native San Franciscan and author of three popular studies of noir: Dark City, Dark City Dames, and The Art of Noir. He is a multiple Edgar and Anthony Award nominee, and the recipient of the Shamus Award for Best First Novel (The Distance). He is founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to the rescue and preservation of “lost” and damaged noir films.

ALEJANDRO MURGUÍA is the author of Southern Front, a short story collection about the Chicano internationalists in Nicaragua, which received an American Book Award in 1991. This War Called Love, Nine Stories was also honored with an American Book Award in 2002. He is working on a new collection of short stories, Tropic Noir.

JIM NISBET has published eight novels and five volumes of poetry. His novels include The Gourmet (aka The Damned Don’t Die), Lethal Injection, Death Puppet, Prelude to a Scream, The Price of the Ticket, and his latest, The Syracuse Codex. He lives in San Francisco where he operates the design firm Electronics Furniture.

PETER PLATE is a self-taught fiction writer and former squatter in the Mission district of San Francisco. His books address the history and geography of inner-city life. His latest novel is Fogtown.

SIN SORACCO was born at St. Luke’s Hospital in the Mission district of San Francisco. She makes up her life from whatever’s around-if there’s nothing handy, she goes somewhere else. The center remains steady: the intense visceral pleasure of stories. She says, “One day our stories will bring the bastards down.”

DOMENIC STANSBERRY is known for his dark, innovative crime novels, including his award-winning North Beach mysteries, The Last Days of Il Duce and Chasing the Dragon. Stansberry is also the author of The Confession, a “modern noir shocker” that has been hailed as the vanguard of the neo-pulp renaissance. He has been nominated three times for the Edgar Allan Poe Award.

DAVID HENRY STERRY is both writer of and performer in a one-man show based on his memoir Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent. His next book will be Putting Your Passion into Print. He has worked as a chicken, chicken fryer, a Hollywood screenwriter, a cherry picker, a sitcom actor, a poet, a stand-up comic (at Holy City Zoo, Cobb’s, and Sutro Bathhouse), a barker (at the Garden of Eden on Broadway in San Francisco), and a marriage counselor.

MICHELLE TEA is cofounder of the legendary all-girl spoken word road show known as Sister Spit. She has contributed to many fiction anthologies and written several acclaimed novels, the most recent of which was a collaboration with illustrator Laurenn McCubbin, titled Rent Girl. Her first collection of poetry, The Beautiful, was released in 2004 by Manic D Press and she curates a reading series called SF Radar at the San Francisco Main Library.