Los Angeles Noir 2
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NAOMI HIRAHARA, born and raised in Southern California, won an Edgar Award for her third mystery in the Mas Arai series, Snakeskin Shamisen. She writes crime fiction and also novels for younger readers; her short story “Number 19” was published in the original Los Angeles Noir. She contributes a mystery serial for an English-language weekly in Japan and regularly leads writing workshops. Her fourth Mas Arai mystery, Blood Hina, is being published in 2010. For more information, visit www.naomihirahara.com.
ROSS MACDONALD (1915–1983) is the pseudonym of the American-Canadian crime-fiction writer Kenneth Millar. He is best known for his highly acclaimed series of eighteen hard-boiled novels set in Southern California featuring private detective Lew Archer. The series includes the best sellers The Goodbye Look, The Underground Man, and Sleeping Beauty, and concluded with The Blue Hammer in 1976. In 1938, he married writer Margaret Millar. Several of his books were adapted into film, two of them starring Paul Newman as Lew Archer. In 1973, the Mystery Writers of America named him a Grand Master.
MARGARET MILLAR (1915–1994) was born in Kitchener, Ontario, and moved to the United States after marrying Kenneth Millar (better known under the pen name Ross Macdonald) in 1938. They resided for decades in the city of Santa Barbara, which was often utilized as a locale in her later novels, under the pseudonyms of San Felice or Santa Felicia. Her book Beast in View won the Best Novel of the Year Award from the Mystery Writers of America, and in 1983 the MWA named her a Grand Master.
WALTER MOSLEY is one of the most versatile and admired writers in America today. He is the author of more than twenty-nine critically acclaimed books, including the major best-selling mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins. His work has been translated into twenty-one languages and includes literary fiction, science fiction, political monographs, and a young adult novel. His short fiction has been widely published, and his nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times Magazine and the Nation, among other publications. Mosley is currently working on a new mystery series set in New York City, about a private investigator named Leonid McGill. The first of the series, The Long Fall, was published in March 2009. He is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, a Grammy, and PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives in New York City.
YXTA MAYA MURRAY is the author of six novels, including the forthcoming The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Kidnapped and The Conquest, winner of a 1999 Whiting Writers’ Award. She is a professor at Loyola Law School and lives in Los Angeles.
JERVEY TERVALON lives in Altadena, California, with his two daughters. He teaches creative writing at the University of Southern California and is currently revising the manuscript of Hope Found Chauncey, a sequel of sorts to his best-selling novel Understand This. His essay “The Slow Death of a Chocolate City,” originally written for the LA Weekly, won a Los Angeles Press Club Award in 2008.