Tampa Bay Noir

About the Contributors

Ace Atkins is the author of twenty-four books, including nine Quinn Colson novels, the first two of which, The Ranger and The Lost Ones, were nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. He is also the author of eight New York Times best sellers in Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series. Before turning to fiction, Atkins was a crime reporter for the Tampa Tribune and played defensive end for the Auburn University football team.

Colette Bancroft has been the book editor at the Tampa Bay Times since 2007. In addition to writing reviews and interviewing authors, she directs the annual Tampa Bay Times Festival of Reading. She served two terms on the board of the National Book Critics Circle. Bancroft earned degrees in English from the University of South Florida and the University of Florida, and she wishes she had finished her dissertation on the novels of Raymond Chandler.

Karen Brown is the author of two novels, The Clairvoyants and The Longings of Wayward Girls, and two prize-winning short story collections, Little Sinners and Other Stories and Pins and Needles: Stories. Her work has appeared in Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and many literary journals, most recently Kenyon Review and One Story. She teaches creative writing at the University of South Florida.

Luis Castillo grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from the University of Southern California. For three decades he has been a television sports producer, working for CNN Headline News, TBS Sports, and Fox Sports. He currently lives in Largo, Florida, with his wife, son, and daughter.

Michael Connelly is the author of thirty-two novels, including the #1 New York Times best sellers Dark Sacred Night, Two Kinds of Truth, and The Late Show. His books, which include the Harry Bosch and Lincoln Lawyer series, have sold more than seventy million copies worldwide. A former newspaper reporter, he has won awards for his journalism and novels and is the executive producer of the Amazon show Bosch. He spends his time in Los Angeles and Tampa.

Tim Dorsey grew up in a small town an hour north of Miami. He graduated from Auburn University, where he was editor of the student newspaper. He was a reporter for the Alabama Journal in Montgomery before joining the Tampa Tribune in 1987, becoming the night metro editor. He left the paper in 1999 and has since published twenty-two novels in several languages, most recently No Sunscreen for the Dead, and regularly hits the New York Times best-seller list.

Sarah Gerard’s most recent book is the novel True Love. Her essay collection Sunshine State was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and her novel Binary Star was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her work has appeared in T Magazine, Granta, Electric Literature, and the Baffler. She was the 2018–2019 New College of Florida writer-in-residence.

Ladee Hubbard’s debut novel, The Talented Ribkins, was published in 2017. Set in Florida, the book received the Ernest J. Gaines Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction. She is also a recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and has published short fiction in Virginia Quarterly Review, Callaloo, Guernica, and Copper Nickel, among other venues. Her latest novel is The Rib King.

Danny López (a.k.a. Phillippe Diederich) is the author of the novels Playing for the Devil’s Fire and Sofrito, and the Dexter Vega mysteries The Last Breath and The Last Girl. The son of Haitian exiles, López was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Mexico City and Miami.

Gale Massey’s debut novel, The Girl from Blind River, received a 2018 Florida Book Award. Her award-winning stories and essays have appeared in the Tampa Bay Times, Sabal, Seven Hills Press, and other places. She has received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Eckerd College’s Writers in Paradise, and has been nominated for the 2019 Clara Johnson Award for Women’s Literature. Massey, a Florida native, lives in St. Petersburg.

Yuly Restrepo Garcés was born in Medellín, Colombia, and came to the United States nearly twenty years ago as an asylee. Her writing has previously appeared in Catapult, PRISM International, Natural Bridge, and Zone 3. She is an Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate, a MacDowell fellow, and an assistant professor of English at the University of Tampa.

Lori Roy is the two-time Edgar Award — winning author of five novels, the most recent of which is Gone Too Long. Her work has been named a New York Times Notable Crime Book twice, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and included on numerous “Best of” lists. Her debut novel, Bent Road, was chosen as a Notable Book by the state of Kansas. Roy lives with her family in Florida.

Eliot Schrefer is the New York Times best-selling author of Endangered and Threatened, both finalists for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. His novels have also been named Editors’ Choice in the New York Times and have won the Green Earth Book Award and the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. He grew up in Clearwater and now lives in New York City, where he reviews fiction for USA Today.

Lisa Unger is the New York Times best-selling author of seventeen novels, including The Stranger Inside. Her novel Under My Skin was an Edgar Award and Hammett Prize nominee. Her short story “The Sleep Tight Motel” was nominated for an Edgar Award. Her books are published in twenty-six languages and have been named Best of the Year or top picks by Today, Good Morning America, Entertainment Weekly, Amazon, and IndieBound.

Sterling Watson is the author of eight novels: The Committee, Suitcase City, Fighting in the Shade, Sweet Dream Baby, Deadly Sweet, Blind Tongues, The Calling, and Weep No More My Brother. His work has been widely praised, including by Dennis Lehane, who says, “The novels of Sterling Watson are to be treasured and passed on to the next generation.”