Montreal Noir

About the Contributors

Samuel Archibald is the author of the short story collection Arvida, which was short-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Best Translated Book Award. He lives, writes, and teaches genre fiction and creative writing in Montreal. He is also a playwright, screenwriter, baseball coach, and avid fly fisherman.

Katie Shireen Assef is a writer and translator of French. Her first book-length translation was Akashic’s Brussels Noir, and her translation of Valérie Mréjen’s novel Black Forest is forthcoming from Phoneme Media. Her work has been featured in journals such as Drunken Boat, FENCE, Epiphany, Joyland, PANK, and Sakura Review. She lives in Los Angeles.

Michel Basilières was born and raised in Montreal’s Milton Park neighborhood. His first novel, Black Bird, won the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award and was short-listed for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. His second novel is A Free Man, and he currently teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies.

Arjun Basu is the author of Squishy, a collection of short stories short-listed for Canada’s ReLit Award. Waiting for the Man, a novel, was long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2014. Born and raised in Montreal, he lives in the Mile End neighborhood, where he has never seen a single horse. He is currently at work on his next novel, and the one after that.

Jacques Filippi started his career as a journalist and has now been a bookseller, translator, sales representative, and editor for almost twenty years. He started his blog, The House of Crime and Mystery, in 2011, and cofounded the QuébeCrime Writers Festival a few years later. His blog is now a website where you can read his reviews, interviews, and other views. He is also hard at work on a trilogy of crime novels.

Tess Fragoulis’s first book, Stories to Hide from Your Mother, was nominated for the Quebec Writers’ Federation Best First Book Award. In 2003, her novel Ariadne’s Dream was long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and received an honorable mention for the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Her latest novel, The Goodtime Girl, was published in 2012. Fragoulis lives, writes, and teaches in Montreal.

Peter Kirby was born in Ireland, grew up in Brixton, and spent years as an itinerant cook in the US before settling down to study law in Montreal. He is the author of the Inspector Luc Vanier series, and his latest novel, Open Season, won the 2016 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel. He practices international law and has been recognized by Benchmark Litigation as a star in international arbitration; the magazine American Lawyer has named him as one of Canada’s leading 500 lawyers.

Geneviève Lefebvre is a scriptwriter, translator of plays, novelist, speechwriter, columnist, and regular contributor to online and print publications like Châtelaine, Elle Québec, Clin d’oeil, and the Journal de Montréal. Her most recent novel, All the Times I Never Died, was published in early 2017. When she’s not writing, Lefebvre runs with Maggie, her canine sprinter.

John McFetridge was born and raised in Greenfield Park (now part of Longueuil) on the South Shore of Montreal. He is a graduate of Concordia University, and the author of the Eddie Dougherty series (Black Rock, A Little More Free, One or the Other, Another Brick in the Wall). McFetridge has also written for film and television, and is the coeditor of the anthology 2113: Stories Inspired by the Music of Rush.

Catherine McKenzie is the best-selling author of six novels, the latest of which is Fractured, named one of the 25 Big Books of Fall 2016 by Goodreads. She is also the author of the legal thriller The Murder Game, written under her pen name, Julie Apple. She writes and lives in Montreal, where she attended McGill Law School, and works as a lawyer.

Martin Michaud has been hailed by critics as the “thriller master of Quebec.” His seven crime novels are best sellers in Quebec and Europe, and he has received the Arthur Ellis Award, the Prix Saint-Pacôme, and the Tenebris Prize. His Victor Lessard series is now adapted for television, and the movie rights for his stand-alone thriller Beneath the Surface have been optioned in the US.

Robert Pobi is a best-selling novelist whose work has been published in more than fifteen countries. He divides his time between Montreal, Florida, Northern California, and a cabin on a lake in the mountains somewhere. His first short story (written when he was twelve) earned him an expulsion from school. He has given up collecting speeding tickets and spends his spare time avoiding social media.

Patrick Senécal was born in Drummondville and published his first novel in 1994. Four years later he published the best-selling novel On the Threshold. His books have been translated into many languages, and a few have been adapted into successful movies. Well known for his horror novels, he nonetheless lives a quiet life with his wife and two kids.

Johanne Seymour worked as a screenwriter and a TV director before she started writing the Kate McDougall novels in 2015. The five volumes are now published in Europe and The Scream of the Deer, the first in the series, has been adapted for TV. Seymour was also the founder of Les Printemps meurtriers, which was a popular crime festival in her town of Knowlton, Quebec.

Howard Shrier is a two-time winner of the Arthur Ellis Award. His acclaimed novels include Buffalo Jump, High Chicago, Boston Cream, and Miss Montreal. Born and raised in Montreal, Shrier started out as a crime reporter at the Montreal Star, and has since worked in theater, television, sketch comedy, improv, and corporate and government communications. He lives in Toronto with his wife and sons, and teaches writing at University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies.

Brad Smith is a novelist and screenwriter who was born and raised in the hamlet of Canfield, in southern Ontario. He has lived in South Africa, Alberta, British Columbia, Texas, and has worked a variety of jobs — farmer, signalman, insulator, truck driver, bartender, schoolteacher, maintenance mechanic, roofer, and carpenter. Smith has published nine novels and adapted his 2003 book All Hat for the screen. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2007.

Ian Truman is a novelist, poet, and visual artist from the East End of Montreal. He is a fan of dirty realism, noir, satire, punk, and hardcore, and hopes to mix these genres in all of his work. A graduate of Concordia University’s creative writing program, he won the 2013 Expozine Alternative Press Award for Best English Book.

Donald Winkler is a three-time winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation (French to English).

Melissa Yi is an emergency physician who writes mystery novels. CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter selected Stockholm Syndrome, her medical thriller about a Montreal hostage situation, as one of the best crime novels of summer 2016. Yi’s short fiction has appeared in Sleuth Magazine, Indian Country Noir, and Fiction River Special Edition: Crime, which was nominated for the Derringer Award. In her spare time, she chases after two small children and one large rottweiler.