Las Vegas Noir

About the contributors

Preston L. Allen is a recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in Literature and the Sonja H. Stone Prize in Fiction. He is the author of the Miami-based thriller Hoochie Mama and the award-winning short story collection Churchboys and Other Sinners. His latest novel is All or Nothing (Akashic Books, 2007). He lived in North Las Vegas, near Nellis Air Force Base for a brief period of time in the ’90s.

Janet Berliner is the Bram Stoker Award — winning author of six novels, including The Madagascar Manifesto trilogy with George Guthridge. She is the editor of six anthologies, including two with illusionist David Copperfield, and one with Joyce Carol Oates. In more than thirty years in publishing, Berliner has also worked as an editor, agent, ghostwriter, teacher, and lecturer. Born in South Africa, she now lives in Las Vegas while she plans her escape to the Caribbean.

Felicia Campbell has trodden the mean streets of both Las Vegas and UNLV for more years than she cares to admit. A professor at UNLV, she has gained international attention for her pioneering work on the positive aspects of gambling and risk taking. As a book critic, she gave weekly reviews on KNPR for over twelve years. Currently, she is executive director of the Far West Popular and American Culture Associations. She is also editor of the Popular Culture Review.

David Corbett is a former private investigator with considerable case experience in Las Vegas. He is also the author of three critically acclaimed novels: The Devil’s Redhead, a finalist for Anthony and Barry awards; Done for a Dime, a New York Times Notable Book and a Macavity Award finalist; and Blood of Paradise, named one of the top ten mysteries and thrillers of 2007 by the Washington Post and a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book. For more information, visit www.davidcorbett.com.

Bliss Esposito was born and raised in Las Vegas, where she learned the intricacies of the gaming world. She writes about the hidden side of the city, the details below the glitzy surface. She recently earned an MFA from UNLV in creative writing.

Tod Goldberg is the author of two novels and the story collection Simplify, winner of the Other Voices Short Story Collection Prize. His long-running column in the Las Vegas Mercury,“Cheap Wisdom,” garnered three Nevada Press Association Awards and his writing appears regularly in Las Vegas City Life, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Jewcy, and E! He teaches creative writing at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and in the MFA program at UC-Riverside.

Jaq Greenspon lives in Las Vegas and has been writing professionally for over twenty years. He has been read widely on several continents and has had the pleasure of seeing his words mangled by professional actors on a number of TV shows and film sets. In Lithuania he is like a god.

Jarret Keene is the author of two poetry collections, Monster Fashion and A Boy’s Guide to Arson, as well as the unauthorized rock-band bio The Killers: Destiny Is Calling Me. He has edited several books, including The Underground Guide to Las Vegas. His primitive post-apocalyptic black-metal band Dead Neon promises to crush your soul.

Lori Kozlowski was born and raised in Las Vegas. A journalist and a published poet, she is a graduate of the University of Southern California’s Master of Fine Arts Writing Program. Her first book is about the Mafia. For more information, visit www.lorikozlowski.com.

Christine McKellar is a resident of Las Vegas and a freelance writer. She is the author of three novels: A Port of No Return, The Shadows of the Sea, and The Devil’s Valet.

Pablo Medina was born in Havana, Cuba. He is the award-winning author of ten books of poetry and prose, most recently The Cigar Roller: A Novel and Points of Balance/Puntos de Apoyo, a bilingual poetry collection. He is the recipient of fellowships and grants from numerous organizations, including the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lila Wallace — Reader’s Digest Fund, and the Cintas Foundation. He teaches at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

John O’Brien was born in Oxford, Ohio in 1960 and graduated from Lakewood High School in 1978. He had several jobs, including busboy, file clerk, and coffee roaster, but writing was his true career. He began in 1987 and wrote up until his death on April 10, 1994. O’Brien committed suicide by gunshot two weeks after learning that his novel, Leaving Las Vegas, was to be made into a movie. Two more of his novels were published posthumously: The Assault on Tony’s and Stripper Lessons.

Scott Phillips is the author of three of the most highly acclaimed crime novels of recent years. His debut novel, The Ice Harvest, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and won a California Book Award. Its follow-up, The Walk-away, continued his success, with the New York Times calling it “wicked fun.” His third novel, Cottonwood, was published by Ballantine. Phillips has spent enough time at the poker tables in Las Vegas to know what works and what doesn’t.

Nora Pierce is the author of the critically-acclaimed novel The Insufficiency of Maps, a selection of the Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” program. She is currently in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, and at work on a new novel. She teaches writing at Stanford University, where she was formerly a Wallace Stegner fellow. She has a love/hate relationship with the Nevada desert, and was once millimeters (millimeters!) away from a million-dollar jackpot.

Todd James Pierce is the author of three books, including the novel A Woman of Stone and the short story collection Newsworld, which won the 2006 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. He is an assistant professor of English at Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo, California.

José Skinner’s Flight and Other Stories was a finalist for the Western States Book Award for Fiction. He worked as an English/Spanish translator and interpreter in the criminal courts of New Mexico before earning his MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His fiction has appeared in Boulevard, Colorado Review, Witness, Bilingual Review, and the anthology In the Shadow of the Strip: Las Vegas Stories. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Texas — Pan American.

Celeste Starr is a male-to-female transgendered escort based in Pahrump, Nevada. “Dirty Blood” is her first published story.

Vu Tran was born in Saigon and grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was a Glenn Schaeffer Fellow at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he currently teaches creative writing and literature. His stories have appeared in The O. Henry Prize Stories, the Southern Review, Glimmer Train, Harvard Review, and many other publications.