Bronx Noir

About the contributors

Thomas Adcock, an Edgar Award — winning novelist, was born in Detroit, raised in the Inwood section of upper Manhattan, and schooled just across the Harlem River in Fordham, the Bronx. A staff writer for the New York Law Journal, he has also worked on television drama projects in Los Angeles for Aaron Spelling Productions and NBC. He is coeditor with Tim McLoughlin of Brooklyn Noir 3 (forthcoming).

Kevin Baker is a novelist and historian. His latest book, Strivers Row, is set in Harlem in 1943. His father was born on Fordham Road, and many of his father’s people lived (and died) in the Bronx.

Thomas Bentil works as a case manager on Rikers Island for Fresh Start, a vocational training and re-entry program. He was first bitten by the writing bug while “doin’ time” in that very place and as a participant in that very program. While incarcerated, he wrote and was the managing editor for a jail-based literary magazine known as the Rikers Review. In a previous life, Thomas was a mildly successful scam artist as well as a full-time methamphetamine addict.

Lawrence Block is an MWA Grand Master and a recipient of the Diamond Dagger life achievement award of the UK Crime Writers Association. He lives and writes in Manhattan.

Jerome Charyn’s most recent novel, The Green Lantern, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he lives in New York and Paris, where he is Distinguished Professor of Film Studies at the American University of Paris. He was born and raised in the Bronx.

Suzanne Chazin is the author of the Georgia Skeehan mystery series, including the novels The Fourth Angel, Flashover, and Fireplay. In 2003, she received the Washington Irving Book Award for both The Fourth Angel and Flashover. A New York native, Ms. Chazin has taught fiction writing at New York University and Sarah Lawrence College. She is married to Thomas Dunne, a senior chief in the FDNY who oversees fires in the Bronx.

Terrence Cheng is the author of two novels, Sons of Heaven and Deep in the Mountains. He earned his MFA at the University of Miami, where he was a James Michener Fellow, and in 2005 he received a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches creative writing at Lehman College, part of the City University of New York. For more information, visit www.tcheng.net.

Ed Dee was born and raised in Yonkers on the northern border of the Bronx. He spent ten years of his NYPD career as a street cop in the South Bronx. Today these same streets can make him laugh and cry, but mostly wish he could do it all again. He loved this opportunity to write about the old neighborhood, the old songs, the gang, the redhead… da Bronx. Ed’s latest novel is The Con Man’s Daughter.

Joanne Dobson, author of the Professor Karen Pelletier mysteries, spent her formative years on Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx — as far away culturally as one could possibly get from New England’s elite Enfield College where Pelletier solves crimes — and occasionally teaches a class. She has spent the large part of her teaching career as an English professor at the Bronx’s Fordham University.

Robert J. Hughes’ novel Late and Soon was published in late 2005, and his next, Seven Sisters, will be out soon. He is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where he writes on the arts, philanthropy, and publishing. He lives in Manhattan now, but spent many merry hours as a youth raising a perfectly law-abiding ruckus with friends in the parish of St. Nicholas of Tolentine.

Marlon James was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1970. He graduated from the University of the West Indies in 1991 with a degree in literature. His debut novel, John Crow’s Devil, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. James teaches creative writing and literature at Macalester College, St. Paul. He lives in Kingston, Jamaica.

Sandra Kitt’s novel The Color of Love, released in 1995, was optioned by HBO and Lifetime. She has been nominated for an NAACP Image Award in Fiction. A native of New York, her artwork is displayed in the African American Museum of Art in Los Angeles. She lives in Riverdale, the Bronx.

Rita Lakin grew up in the East Bronx on Elder Avenue. She attended Hunter College on the Bronx campus and then worked in Los Angeles as a writer/producer in television for twenty-five years. Now she is happily writing mysteries about a group of geriatric lady P.I.’s, including Getting Old Is Murder, Getting Old Is the Best Revenge, and Getting Old Is Criminal.

Miles Marshall Lewis moved northeast to Co-op City from Highbridge at the age of four. In the 1990s he worked as an editor at Vibe and XXL magazines, interviewing Afrika Bambaataa, Nas, Rakim, and many others. Author of Scars of the Soul Are Why Kids Wear Bandages When They Don’t Have Bruises and There’s a Riot Goin’ On, Lewis is also founder of Bronx Biannual literary journal. He lives in Paris, France.

Patrick W. Picciarelli, a former lieutenant with the NYPD, is the author of Mala Femina: A Woman’s Life as the Daughter of a Don, among other crime-related books. His affection for the Bronx goes way back, and he fondly recalls his uncles telling him that there is no Mafia as they sipped red wine in Dominic’s on Arthur Avenue, smoked Italian stinkers, and lamented the passing of Fat Tony Boombatz, who accidentally suflocated in the trunk of a Cadillac.

Abraham Rodriguez, Jr. was born and raised in the South Bronx. His first book, The Boy without a Flag, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His novel Spidertown won a 1995 American Book Award and was optioned by Columbia Pictures. His latest novel, The Buddha Book, was published by Picador in 2001. He currently lives in Berlin, Germany, where he is immersed in the local music scene.

S.J. Rozan was born and raised in the Bronx. She is the author of eight books in the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series and the standalones Absent Friends and In This Rain. Her work has won the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero, and Macavity awards. An architect by training, she worked on the new 41st Precinct, which replaces Fort Apache. Her upcoming novel is The Shanghai Moon.

Steven Torres was born and raised in the Bronx. A graduate of Stuyvesant High School, Hunter College, and the City University of New York Graduate Center, he is also the author of the Precinct Puerto Rico series of novels for St. Martin’s Press. The Concrete Maze is his fifth novel and the first he has set in New York City. For more information, visit www.steventorres.com.

Joseph Wallace was born in Brooklyn, but his favorite place in New York City was the Bronx Zoo, especially on cold winter days when the grounds were deserted, the animals were alert and hungry, and something unexpected always seemed about to happen. He is the author of many nonfiction books and magazine articles (including several about the zoo), and is a contributor to the crime anthologies Hard-Boiled Brooklyn and Baltimore Noir.