New Orleans Noir

About the contributors

Thomas Adcock is an Edgar Award — winning author of six novels, including Thrown-Away Child, set in New Orleans. He is a reporter for the New York Law Journal. Twenty-five years ago, thanks to marrying the New Orleans — born actress Kim Sykes, the Crescent City became his second home.

Ace Atkins covered the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast for Outside Magazine. The Pulitzer Prize — nominated journalist is also the author of four crime novels based in and around the city. He lives and writes in Oxford, Mississippi.

Patty Friedmann has lived in New Orleans all her life, except for slight interruptions for education and natural disasters. Her darkly comic novels include Eleanor Rushing, Secondhand Smoke, and A Little Bit Ruined. Her works have been selections of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program and Borders Original Voices, and Book Sense 76 picks.

David Fulmer’s Chasing the Devil’s Tail, a mystery set in turn-of-the-century Storyville, New Orleans, won a Shamus Award and was a finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Barry Award, and a Falcon Award. His Storyville novels Jass and Rampart Street have drawn high praise. He lives in Atlanta with his daughter Italia.

Barbara Hambly was born in San Diego, California, and originally trained as an academic historian. She lived part-time in New Orleans for three years while married to science fiction writer George Alec Effinger; she now lives in Los Angeles.

Greg Herren is the author of six mystery novels set in New Orleans, including Mardi Gras Mambo and Murder in the Rue Chartres (forthcoming). He lives in the Lower Garden District of New Orleans and refuses to relocate. Ever.

Laura Lippman, a Baltimore-based writer best known for her award-winning Tess Monaghan novels, believes New Orleans is the only other city where she could be happy for more than a few days, preferably December through March.

Tim McLoughlin is the editor of the multiple award — winning anthology Brooklyn Noir. His novel, Heart of the Old Country, was a selection of the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Program and won Italy’s Premio Penne award. He was married in St. Mary’s Chapel on Jackson Avenue in the Garden District.

James Nolan, a fifth-generation New Orleans native, is a widely published poet, fiction writer, essayist, and translator. His collections of poetry are Why I Live in the Forest and What Moves Is Not the Wind, both from Wesleyan University Press. He is a regular contributor to Boulevard, and recent stories have come out in Shenandoah, the Southern Review, and the Chattahoochee Review. He lives in the French Quarter, and currently directs the Loyola Writing Institute at Loyola University.

Ted O’Brien moved, somewhat arbitrarily, from South Florida to New Orleans in 2000. He signed on as a bookseller and continues, post-Katrina, to live and work in the Garden District.

Eric Overmyer’s plays include On the Verge, Native Speech, In a Pig’s Valise, In Perpetuity Throughout the Universe, The Heliotrope Bouquet by Scott Joplin & Louis Chauvin, and Dark Rapture. At one point he had a home in the Faubourg Marigny on Kerlerec Street, and he has been a “near” Orleanian for twenty years.

Jeri Cain Rossi is the author of Angel with a Criminal Kiss (Creation Books) and Red Wine Moan (Manic D Press). Since Katrina, she has resided in San Francisco, but she left her heart on the wild streets of New Orleans. She dedicates her story in this collection to the loving memories of Jason and Tommy, two beauties who will always be young, sipping cocktails on Decatur Street.

Kalamu ya Salaam is a New Orleans — based editor, writer, filmmaker, and teacher. He is director of Listen to the People, a New Orleans oral history project; moderator of e-Drum, a listserv for black writers; and comoderator, with his son Mtume, of Breath of Life, a black music website. Salaam is also the digital video instructor and the codirector of Students at the Center, a writing-based program in the New Orleans public school system.

Julie Smith is the Edgar Award — winning author of two detective series set in New Orleans. A former reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the San Francisco Chronicle, she lives in the Faubourg Marigny section of New Orleans, which is much funkier than it sounds.

Maureen Tan is the author of the critically acclaimed Jane Nichols suspense novels. Her focus on strong, independent female protagonists and Southern locales continues in A Perfect Cover — set in the Vietnamese community in New Orleans — and in her most recent book, Too Close to Home.

Jervey Tervalon was born in New Orleans and raised in Los Angeles. He has written two novels set in New Orleans, Dead Above Ground and Lita. He’s almost obsessed with Creole Cream Cheese, stuffed Mirliton (militon), and good grits.

Olympia Vernon is the author of three critically acclaimed novels published by Grove Atlantic. Her first, Eden, was written in Uptown New Orleans and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. In 2006, A Killing in This Town was published to rave reviews. Vernon is a Louisiana native and is now the Hallie Brown Ford Chair at Willamette University.

Christine Wiltz has written five books: a detective trilogy — The Killing Circle, A Diamond Before You Die, and The Emerald Lizard; a novel, Glass House; and a biography, The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld. All of her books are set in New Orleans, where she was born and still lives.