JIM BEANE was born at Garfield Hospital in Washington, D.C. and spent his early childhood in Michigan Park near the city line. He grew up in the ’burbs. His stories have appeared in the Baltimore Review, the Potomac Review and the Long Story. He lives in Prince George’s County, Maryland with his wife and daughters.
RUBEN CASTANED covered the D.C. crime beat for the Washington Post from 1989 through the mid-1990s. He has also written for the Washington Post Magazine, the California Journal, and Hispanic Magazine. A native of Los Angeles, Castaneda, forty-four, lives in Washington.
RICHARD CURREY grew up in Washington, D.C. and environs and lives there today. His stories have appeared in O. Henry, Pushcart, and Best American Short Stor collections, aired on National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts series, and performed at Symphony Space in New York. His novel Lost Highway was reissued in 2005 in print and as an audiobook.
JIM FUSILLI is the author of the award-winning Terry Orr series, which includes Hard, Hard City, which was named winner of the Gumshoe Award for Best Novel of 2004, as well as Closing Time, A Well-Known Secret, and Tribeca Blues. He also writes for the Wall Street Journal and is a contributor to National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.
JAMES GRAD is the author of Six Days of the Condo and a dozen other novels. He has worked as a national investigative reporter and a U.S. Senate aide, and has published several award-winning short stories. Grady received France’s Grand Prix du Roman Noir in 2001 and Italy’s Raymond Chandler medal in 2004. He lives inside D.C.’s Beltway.
JENNIFER HOWARD, a native of Washington, D.C., grew up in the Palisades section of town, around the corner from the old MacArthur Theatre. Her fiction, essays, reviews, and features have appeared in the Washington Pos (where she was a contributing editor from 1995–2005), VQR, the Boston Review, Slate, the Blue Moon Review, Salon, New York Magazine, and other publications. She now lives on Capitol Hill with her husband, the writer Mark Trainer, and their two children.
LESTER IRBY was born and raised in Northeast D.C. He was first arrested at age thirteen and later spent more than thirty years in federal prison for crimes ranging from bank robberies to two prison escapes. Irby wrote “God Don’t Like Ugly” while incarcerated in the Lewisberg Federal Penitentiary. He was released on parole in May 2005 and currently resides in Southeast D.C.
KENJI JASPER was born and raised in the nation’s capital and currently lives in Brooklyn. He is a regular contributor to National Public Radio’s Morning Edition and has written articles for Savoy, Essence, VIBE, the Village Voice, the Charlotte Observer and Africana.com. He is the author of three novels, Dark, Dakota Grand, and Seeking Salamanca Mitchell
NORMAN KELLEY is the author of three “noir soul” novels featuring Nina Halligan: Black Heat, The Big Mango, andA Phat Death. He is also the author of The Head Negro in Charge Syndrome: The Dead End of Black Politics, as well as the editor of R&B (Rhythm and Business): The Political Economy of Black Music. He was born and raised in D.C. and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
LAURA LIPPMAN is best-known for her award-winning Tess Monaghan series, set forty miles to the north of Washington, D.C. She spent part of her childhood just outside the District line when her father was the Washington correspondent for the Atlanta Constitution. Lippman still frequents the city, home to some of her favorite people and restaurants.
JIM PATTON grew up a D.C. suburb, then moved to the Left Coast. Back in the area after many years, he finds the summers even more stifling, the traffic more maddening. Worst of all, Shirley Povich is gone.
GEORGE PELECANOS is a screenwriter, independent-film producer, award-winning journalist, and the author of the bestselling series of Derek Strange novels set in and around Washington, D.C., where he lives with his wife and children.
QUINTIN PETERSON is a twenty-four-year veteran police officer with the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C., where he is currently assigned to its Office of Public Information as a media liaison officer. He is the author of several plays and screenplays and two crime novels, SIN (Special Investigations Network) and The Wages of SIN.
DAVID SLATER is originally from the Jersey Meadowlands, and has called D.C. home for more than two decades. During that time, he has worked in several dive restaurants and, for the last fifteen years, in environmental conservation. He currently lives with his wife and two kids in the Clarendon section of Arlington, Virginia.
ROBERT WISDOM grew up in the Petworth area of Northwest Washington, back when D.C. was still a town. He attended D.C. public schools and graduated from St. Albans. He was called Bobby growing up, which gave way to Bob in the world after D.C., got the nickname Bayobe from his Brazilian capoeira master, and currently plays a character named Bunny on HBO’s The Wire. He’s all about the B’
Also available from the Akashic Books Noir Series
BROOKLYN NOIR
edited by Tim McLoughlin
350 pages, a trade paperback original, $15.95
*Winner of SHAMUS AWARD, ANTHONY AWARD, ROBERT L. FISH MEMORIAL AWARD; Finalist for EDGAR AWARD, PUSHCART PRIZE
Twenty brand new crime stories from New York’s punchiest borough. Contributors include: Pete Hamill, Arthur Nersesian, Maggie Estep, Nelson George, Neal Pollack, Sidney Offit, Ken Bruen, and others.
Brooklyn Noir is such a stunningly perfect combination that you can’t believe you haven’t read an anthology like this before. But trust me—you haven’t. Story after story is a revelation, filled with the requisite sense of place, but also the perfect twists that crime stories demand. The writing is flat-out superb, filled with lines that will sing in your head for a long time to come.”
—Laura Lippman, winner of the Edgar, Agatha, and Shamus awards
BROOKLYN NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS
edited by Tim McLoughlin
309 pages, trade paperback, $15.95
Brooklyn Noi is back with a vengeance, this time with masters of yore mixing with the young blood: H.P. Lovecraft, Lawrence Block, Donald Westlake, Pete Hamill, Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead, Irwin Shaw, Carolyn Wheat, Thomas Wolfe, Hubert Selby, Stanley Ellin, Gilbert Sorrentino, Maggie Estep, and Salvatore La Puma.
CHICAGO NOIR
edited by Neal Pollack
252 pages, a trade paperback original, $14.95
Chicago Noi is populated by hired killers and jazzmen, drunks and dreamers, corrupt cops and ticket scalpers and junkies. It’s the Chicago that the Department of Tourism doesn’t want you to see, a place where hard cases face their sad fates, and pay for their sins in blood. This isn’t someone’s dream of Chicago. It’s not even a nightmare. It’s just the real city, unfiltered. Chicago Noir
Brand new stories by: Neal Pollack, Achy Obejas, Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski, Adam Langer, Joe Meno, Peter Orner, Kevin Guilfoile, Bayo Ojikutu, Jeff Allen, Luciano Guerriero, Claire Zulkey, Andrew Ervin, M.K. Meyers, Todd Dills, C.J. Sullivan, Daniel Buckman, Amy Sayre-Roberts, and Jim Arndorfer.
BALTIMORE NOIR
edited by Laura Lippman
252 pages, a trade paperback original, $14.95
Brand new stories by: David Simon, Laura Lippman, Tim Cockey, Rob Hiaasen, Robert Ward, Sujata Massey, Jack Bludis, Rafael Alvarez, Marcia Talley, Joseph Wallace, Lisa Respers France, Charlie Stella, Sarah Weinman, Dan Fesperman, Jim Fusilli, and Ben Neihart.
LAURA LIPPMAN has lived in Baltimore most of her life and she would have spent even more time there if the editors of the Sun had agreed to hire her earlier. She attended public schools and has lived in several of the city’s distinctive neighborhoods, including Dickeyville, Tuscanyand Canterbury, Evergreen, and South Federal Hill.
SAN FRANCISCO NOIR
edited by Peter Maravelis
252 pages, a trade paperback original, $14.95
Brand new stories by: Domenic Stansberry, Barry Gifford, Eddie Muller, Robert Mailer Anderson, Michelle Tea, Peter Plate, Kate Braverman, David Corbett, Alejandro Murguía, Sin Soracco, Alvin Lu, Jon Longhi, Will Christopher Baer, Jim Nesbit, and Dav
id Henry Sterry.
DUBLIN NOIR
The Celtic Tiger vs. The Ugly American
edited by Ken Bruen
228 pages, a trade paperback original, $14.95
Brand new stories by: Ken Bruen, Eoin Colfer, Jason Starr, Laura Lippman, Olen Steinhauer, Peter Spiegelman, Kevin Wignall, Jim Fusilli, John Rickards, Patrick J. Lambe, Charlie Stella, Ray Banks, James O. Born, Sarah Weinman, Pat Mullan, Reed Farrel Coleman, Gary Phillips, Duane Swierczynski, and Craig McDonald.
These books are available at local bookstores.
They can also be purchased with a credit card online through www.akashicbooks.com.
To order by mail send a check or money order to:
AKASHIC BOOKS
PO Box 1456, New York, NY 10009
www.akashicbooks.com, [email protected]
(Prices include shipping. Outside the U.S., add $8 to each book ordered.)
D.C. Noir Page 26