New Haven Noir

About the Contributors

Amy Bloom is the best-selling author of three novels, three collections of short stories, a children’s book, and a collection of essays. She has been a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and has won a National Magazine Award for Fiction. She lives in Connecticut and taught at Yale University for the last decade. She is now Wesleyan University’s Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing.

Stephen L. Carter is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor at Yale Law School. He is the author of eight works of nonfiction, most recently The Violence of Peace: America’s Wars in the Age of Obama. He has published six novels under his own name, others under a pseudonym, and over eight hundred short stories, articles, op-eds, and reviews. He could do none of this without the love, support, and deft editing of his wife, Enola Aird.

John Crowley is a recipient of the American Academy and Institute of Letters Award for Literature and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. His sci-fi novel Engine Summer is listed in David Pringle’s Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels. His books include Little, Big, the Ægypt Cycle quartet, The Translator, Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land, Four Freedoms, and several volumes of short fiction. He teaches fiction writing and screenwriting at Yale.

Michael Cunningham is the author of the novels A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, The Hours (winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and Pulitzer Prize), The Snow Queen, Specimen Days, and By Nightfall, as well as the nonfiction book Land’s End: A Walk in Provincetown. His latest book, A Wild Swan and Other Tales (illustrated by Yuko Shimizu), was published in November 2015. He lives in New York and teaches at Yale.

Lisa D. Gray’s writing tackles issues of race and class while highlighting the intersections between identities and groups. She currently teaches at Mills College and earned her BA from Spelman College and her MFA from Mills College. She’s attended VONA, completed a residency at the Vermont Studio Center, and received the Joseph Henry Jackson Award for distinguished writing from the San Francisco Foundation.

Chris Knopf’s latest Sam Acquillo novel, Back Lash, received a starred review from Booklist. The Last Refuge, Two Time, and Black Swan were reviewed by the New York Times. Dead Anyway drew starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus, and Library Journal, was named a Best Crime Novel of 2012 by the Boston Globe, and won the 2013 Nero Award. Kill Switch was short-listed for the 2016 Derringer Award.

Alice Mattison’s most recent book is The Kite and the String: How to Write with Spontaneity and Control — and Live to Tell the Tale. She’s the author of six novels, including When We Argued All Night and The Book Borrower, and four collections of stories, including In Case We’re Separated. She lives in New Haven and teaches fiction in the MFA program at Bennington College.

Karen E. Olson, a New Haven native, received the Sara Ann Freed Memorial Award for Sacred Cows, her mystery debut set in her hometown, and a Shamus nomination for Shot Girl, the fourth in the Annie Seymour mystery series. A longtime journalist, she was an editor at the New Haven Register and is currently working at Yale while writing her third crime series and enjoying the best pizza anywhere.

Chandra Prasad has written several award-winning novels, including On Borrowed Wings, a historical drama set at Yale University. She is the originator and editor of Mixed, an anthology on the multiracial experience, which was published to international acclaim by W.W. Norton. Prasad’s shorter works have appeared in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, among other places. Her first young adult novel, Damselfly, will be published by Scholastic in 2018.

David Rich splits time between writing movies, television, plays, and novels. He wrote the feature film Renegades, starring Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Phillips, as well as episodes of MacGyver and other shows. Forsaking Los Angeles for small-town Connecticut, David turned to fiction, writing Caravan of Thieves and Middle Man, featuring Marine Lieutenant Rollie Waters and his con-artist father.

Roxana Robinson is the author of nine books: five novels, including Cost; three collections of short stories; and the biography Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, and elsewhere. She teaches in the Hunter College MFA Program and divides her time between New York, Connecticut, and Maine. She has received fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation and is the president of the Authors Guild.

Hirsh Sawhney grew up in Orange, Connecticut, and currently resides in New Haven. He has also lived in New York City, London, and New Delhi. His debut novel, South Haven, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. He is the editor of Akashic’s Delhi Noir anthology, and his articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, and the Times Literary Supplement. He is an assistant professor at Wesleyan University.

Jessica Speart is the author of the highly acclaimed narrative nonfiction book Winged Obsession about the world’s most notorious butterfly smuggler. The book was an Indie Next pick and has been optioned for a feature film. Speart also penned a mystery series featuring US Fish and Wildlife Service agent Rachel Porter. The series was created after years of investigating wildlife and drug-trafficking crimes for publications such as the New York Times Magazine.

Jonathan Stone does most of his writing on the commuter train between the Connecticut suburbs and his advertising job in Manhattan. He has published eight mystery/suspense novels, including The Teller, Two for the Show, and Moving Day, which was an Amazon Kindle First. His short stories have appeared in the 2013 and 2014 Mystery Writers of America anthologies, and in Best American Mystery Stories 2016, edited by Elizabeth George.

Sarah Pemberton Strong is the author of two novels, including the noir homage The Fainting Room, “a masterful exploration of longing and its consequences” (Publishers Weekly). She is also the author of a book of poetry. To write “Callback,” her story in this voume, she drew on seventeen years’ experience working as a plumber. She currently teaches writing at Quinnipiac University and lives in Hamden, Connecticut.