by Ed Park
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Dimitri Anastasopoulos was born in Athens, Greece. He is the author of A Larger Sense of Harvey and Farm for Mutes. Anastasopoulos teaches contemporary literature and creative writing at the University at Buffalo.
Lawrence Block, an internationally best-selling novelist, was born at Buffalo Children’s Hospital, lived a few years at 2155 Delaware Avenue, a few more at 673 Parkside, and spent the rest of his youth at 422 Starin Avenue. He attended PS 66 (now North Park Academy) and Bennett High, where he was Class Poet in 1955. Most of his writing is set in New York City, his home for most of his adult life, but his Ehrengraf stories take place in Buffalo.
Kim Chinquee is the author of the collections Oh Baby, Pretty, and Pistol. Her work has appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies including NOON, the Nation, Conjunctions, StoryQuarterly, Ploughshares, Denver Quarterly, The Pushcart Prize, Huffington Post, and others. She is an associate editor of New World Writing, and an associate professor of English at SUNY–Buffalo State.
Brooke Costello was born and raised in North Buffalo. He attended St Joseph’s Collegiate Institute for Young Men, and Oberlin College. Window breaking and prank calling were his calling cards as a youth. He is currently working on two novels, Gravquake (science fiction) and Jumpy’s Game, a noir set in the blizzard of 1977 in Buffalo. He lives in New York City with his wife Justine and sons Redd and Greer.
Tom Fontana was born and raised on the West Side. Italian-Polish, he attended Canisius High and SUCB, from which he received an honorary doctorate in letters. Immediately after college, he worked at Studio Arena Theatre. He has done a lot of writing for TV, including St. Elsewhere, Homicide, Oz, Copper, and Netflix’s Borgia. Fontana is now writing his first (and last) novel for HarperCollins. He proudly calls both Buffalo and New York City home.
Brigid Hughes is the founding editor of the literary magazine A Public Space, and a contributing editor at Graywolf Press. She was born and raised in Buffalo.
Christina Milletti is an associate professor of English at the University at Buffalo where she curates the Exhibit X Fiction Series and helped to found the new MA in English/Innovative Writing Program. Her collection of short stories, The Religious & Other Fictions, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press. She has just finished a novel called Choke Box and is now at work on a new collection of fictions called Erratics.
Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities and the National Book Award. She grew up in the countryside north of Buffalo, and attended school in the suburb of Williamsville. Buffalo has been transmogrified into “Union City” in her novel What I Lived For and “Port Oriskany” in many other novels and stories. Oates edited both New Jersey Noir and Prison Noir for Akashic Books.
Ed Park was born in Buffalo in 1970. He is the author of the novel Personal Days and has been a newspaper, magazine, and book editor. He lives in New York City, where he and his sons continue to root for the Sabres and Bills.
Connie Porter is from Lackawanna, New York. She is the author of the Addy series of historical children’s novels from American Girl. Her first novel, All-Bright Court, was set in Lackawanna. Her novel Imani All Mine, set in Buffalo, was named an Honor Book by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She lives in Las Vegas, and is a lifelong Bills fan.
Lissa Marie Redmond was born and raised in Western New York. She has been with the Buffalo Police Department since 1993. After making detective in 1999, she was assigned to the sex offense squad and later to the cold case homicide unit where she still works. Detective Redmond has a bachelor’s degree from the State University at Buffalo. She lives and writes in South Buffalo with her police detective husband, Dan Redmond, and their two daughters.
Gary Earl Ross, a novelist and playwright, is a retired University of Buffalo professor. His work includes the books The Wheel of Desire, Shimmerville, and Blackbird Rising, and the plays Sleepwalker, Picture Perfect, The Best Woman, Murder Squared, The Scavenger’s Daughter, Matter of Intent (winner of the Edgar Award), The Mark of Cain, and The Guns of Christmas. He is at work on the Buffalo-based Gideon Rimes mystery series. For more information visit www.garyearlross.net.
S.J. Rozan is the author of fifteen novels and four dozen short stories and has edited two anthologies, one of which is Bronx Noir from Akashic Books. Though she was born in the Bronx, family lore always maintained she was conceived in Buffalo. Like a bad penny, she returned there for graduate school, living for four years near the old University of Buffalo campus. For more information visit www.sjrozan.net.
John Wray is the author of the novels The Right Hand of Sleep, Canaan’s Tongue, and Lowboy. His fourth novel, The Lost Times Accidents, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
BONUS MATERIAL
Excerpt from USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series
Also available in the Akashic Noir Series
Akashic Noir Series Awards & Recognition
INTRODUCTION
WRITERS ON THE RUN
From USA NOIR: Best of the Akashic Noir Series, edited by Johnny Temple
In my early years as a book publisher, I got a call one Saturday from one of our authors asking me to drop by his place for “a smoke.” I politely declined as I had a full day planned. “But Johnny,” the author persisted, “I have some really good smoke.” My curiosity piqued, I swung by, but was a bit perplexed to be greeted with suspicion at the author’s door by an unhinged whore and her near-nude john. The author rumbled over and ushered me in, promptly sitting me down on a smelly couch and assuring the others I wasn’t a problem. Moments later, the john produced a crack pipe to resume the party I had evidently interrupted. This wasn’t quite the smoke I’d envisaged, so I gracefully excused myself after a few (sober) minutes. I scurried home pondering the author’s notion that it was somehow appropriate to invite his publisher to a crack party.
It may not have been appropriate, but it sure was noir.
From the start, the heart and soul of Akashic Books has been dark, provocative, well-crafted tales from the disenfranchised. I learned early on that writings from outside the mainstream almost necessarily coincide with a mood and spirit of noir, and are composed by authors whose life circumstances often place them in environs vulnerable to crime.
My own interest in noir fiction grew from my early exposure to urban crime, which I absorbed from various perspectives. I was born and raised in Washington, DC, and have lived in Brooklyn since 1990. In the 1970s and ’80s, when violent, drug-fueled crime in DC was rampant, my mother hung out with cops she’d befriended through her work as a nearly unbeatable public defender. She also grew close to some of her clients, most notably legendary DC bank robber Lester “LT” Irby (a contributor to DC Noir), who has been one of my closest friends since I was fifteen, though he was incarcerated from the early 1970s until just recently. Complicating my family’s relationship with the criminal justice system, my dad sued the police stridently in his work as legal director of DC’s American Civil Liberties Union.
Both of my parents worked overtime. By the time my sister Kathy was nine and I was seven, we were latchkey kids prone to roam, explore, and occasionally break laws. Though an arrest for shoplifting helped curb my delinquent tendencies, the interest in crime remained. After college I worked with adolescents and completed a master’s degree in social work; my focus was on teen delinquency.
Throughout the 1990s, my relationship with the urban underbelly expanded as I spent a great deal of time in dank nightclubs populated by degenerates and outcasts. I played bass guitar in Girls Against Boys, a rock and roll group that toured extensively in the US and Europe. The long hours on the road not spent on stage gave way to book publishing, which began as a hobby in 1996 with my friends Bobby and Mark Sullivan.
The first book we published was The Fuck-Up, by Arthur Nersesian—a dark, provocative, well-crafted tale from the disenfranchised. A few years later Heart of the Old Country by Tim McLoughlin became one of ou
r early commercial successes. The book was widely praised both for its classic noir voice and its homage to the people of South Brooklyn. While Brooklyn is chock-full of published authors these days, Tim is one of the few who was actually born and bred here. In his five decades, Tim has never left the borough for more than five weeks at a stretch and he knows the place, through and through, better than anyone I’ve met.
In 2003, inspired by Brooklyn’s unique and glorious mix of cultures, Tim and I set out to explore New York City’s largest borough in book form, in a way that would ring true to local residents. Tim loves his home borough despite its flagrant flaws, and was easily seduced by the concept of working with Akashic to try and portray its full human breadth.
He first proposed a series of books, each one set in a different neighborhood, whether it be Bay Ridge, Williamsburg, Park Slope, Fort Greene, Bed-Stuy, or Canarsie. It was an exciting idea, but it’s hard enough to publish a single book, let alone commit to a full series. After we considered various other possibilities, Tim came upon the idea of a fiction anthology organized by neighborhood, each one represented by a different author. We were looking for stylistic diversity, so we focused on “noir,” and defined it in the broadest sense: we wanted stories of tragic, soulful struggle against all odds, characters slipping, no redemption in sight.
Conventional wisdom dictates that literary anthologies don’t sell well, but this idea was too good to resist—it seemed the perfect form for exploring the whole borough, and we got to work soliciting stories. We batted around book titles, including Under the Hood, before settling on Brooklyn Noir. The volume came together beautifully and was a surprise hit for Akashic, quickly selling through multiple printings and winning awards. (See pages 548–550 for a full list of prizes garnered by stories originally published in the Noir Series.)
Having seen nearly every American city, large and small, through the windows of a van or tour bus, I have developed a deep fondness for their idiosyncrasies. So for me it was easy logic to take the model of Brooklyn Noir—sketching out dark urban corners through neighborhood-based short fiction—and extend it to other cities. Soon came Chicago Noir, San Francisco Noir, and London Noir (our first of many overseas locations). Selecting the right editor to curate each book has been the most important decision we make before assembling it. It’s a welcome challenge because writers are often enamored of their hometowns, and many are seduced by the urban landscape’s rough edges. The generous support of literary superheroes like George Pelecanos, Laura Lippman, Dennis Lehane, and Joyce Carol Oates, all of whom have edited series volumes, has been critical.
There are now fifty-nine books in the Noir Series. Forty of them are from American locales. As of this writing, a total of 787 authors have contributed 917 stories to the series and helped Akashic to stay afloat during perilous economic times. By publishing six to eight new volumes in the Noir Series every year, we have provided a steady venue for short stories, which have in recent times struggled with diminishing popularity. Akashic’s commitment to the short story has been rewarded by the many authors—of both great stature and great obscurity—who have allowed us to publish their work in the series for a nominal fee.
I am particularly indebted to all sixty-seven editors who have cumulatively upheld a high editorial standard across the series. The series would never have gotten this far without rigorous quality control. There also couldn’t be a Noir Series without my devoted and tireless (if occasionally irreverent) staff led by Johanna Ingalls, Ibrahim Ahmad, and Aaron Petrovich.
* * *
This volume serves up a top-shelf selection of stories from the series set in the United States. USA Noir only scratches the surface, however, and every single volume has more gems on offer.
When I set out to compile USA Noir, I was delighted by the immediate positive responses from nearly every author I contacted. The only author on my initial invitation list who isn’t included here is one I couldn’t track down: the publisher explained to me that the writer was “literally on the run.” While I’m disappointed that we can’t include the story, the circumstance is true to the Noir Series spirit.
And part of me—the noir part—is expecting a phone call from the writer, inviting me over for a smoke.
Johnny Temple
Brooklyn, NY
July 2013
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More about USA Noir
The best USA-based stories in the Akashic Noir Series, compiled into one volume and edited by Johnny Temple!
“All the heavy hitters . . . came out for USA Noir . . . an important anthology of stories shrewdly culled by Johnny Temple.” —New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice
“Readers will be hard put to find a better collection of short stories in any genre.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A must read for mystery fans, not just devotees of Akashic’s ‘Noir’ series, this anthology serves as both an introduction for newcomers and a greatest-hits package for regular readers of the series . . . There isn’t a weak story in the collection . . . Strongly recommended for readers who enjoy mysteries published by Hard Case Crime, as well as for fans of police procedurals.” —Library Journal (starred review)
“The 37 stories in this collection represent the best of the U.S.-based anthologies, and the list of contributors include virtually anyone who’s made the best-seller list with a work of crime fiction in the last decade . . . a must-have anthology.” —Booklist (starred review)
“It’s hard to imagine how the present anthology could be topped for sheer marquee appeal . . . Perhaps the single most impressive feature of the collection is its range of voices, from Joyce Carol Oates’ faux innocent young family to Megan Abbott’s impressionable high school kids to the chorus of peremptory voices S.J. Rozan plants in a haunted thief’s head. Eat your heart out, Walt Whitman: These are the folks who hear America singing, and moaning and screaming.” —Kirkus Reviews
“A less enlightened Temple cover collection of crime and mystery stories could easily reduce itself to stereotypical cartoons about white detectives with a whiskey bottle and a gun in the drawer but Akashic’s series takes itself very seriously in its mission to represent all aspects of a city’s dark side.” —Kirkus Reviews, Feature Story/Interview with Johnny Temple
“For those who prefer their crime closer to home, there is USA Noir, a veritable greatest hits of Akashic’s long-running, acclaimed noir anthology series, rounding up solid gold blackness of the bleakest and darkest kind . . . Like Chuck Berry sang, ‘Anything you want, we got right here in the USA.’” —Mystery Scene Magazine
Launched with the summer ’04 award-winning best seller Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books has published over sixty volumes in its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.
Featuring Noir Series stories from: Dennis Lehane, Don Winslow, Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Susan Straight, Jonathan Safran Foer, Laura Lippman, Pete Hamill, Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Child, T. Jefferson Parker, Lawrence Block, Terrance Hayes, Jerome Charyn, Jeffery Deaver, Maggie Estep, Bayo Ojikutu, Tim McLoughlin, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Reed Farrel Coleman, Megan Abbott, Elyssa East, James W. Hall, J. Malcolm Garcia, Julie Smith, Joseph Bruchac, Pir Rothenberg, Luis Alberto Urrea, Domenic Stansberry, John O’Brien, S.J. Rozan, Asali Solomon, William Kent Krueger, Tim Broderick, Bharti Kirchner, Karen Karbo, and Lisa Sandlin.
JOHNNY TEMPLE is the publisher and editor in chief of Akashic Books, an award-winning Brooklyn-based independent company dedicated to publishing urban literary fiction and political nonfiction. Temple won the 2013 Ellery Queen Award; the American Association of Publishers’ 2005 Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing; and the 2010 Jay and Deen Kogan Award for Excellence in Noir Literature. Temple plays bass guitar in the band Girls Against Boys, which has toured extensively across the globe and released numerous albums on independ
ent and major record companies. He has contributed articles and political essays to various publications, including the Nation, Publishers Weekly, AlterNet, Poets & Writers, and BookForum. He is also the chair of the Brooklyn Literary Council, which works with Brooklyn’s borough president to plan the annual Brooklyn Book Festival in September.
USA Noir is available in paperback from our website and in bookstores everywhere. The e-book edition is available wherever e-books are sold.
ABOUT THE AKASHIC NOIR SERIES
The Akashic Books Noir series was launched in 2004 with the award-winning anthology, Brooklyn Noir. Each book is comprised of all new stories, each taking place within a distinct location within the city of the book. Stories in the series have won multiple Edgar, Shamus, and Hammett awards and the volumes have been translated into 10 languages. Every book is available on our website, as eBooks from your favorite vendor, and in print at online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere. For more information on the series, including an up-to-date list of available titles, please visit www.akashicbooks.com/noirseries.htm.
NOW AVAILABLE IN THE AKASHIC NOIR SERIES
BALTIMORE NOIR, edited by LAURA LIPPMAN
BARCELONA NOIR (SPAIN), edited by ADRIANA V. LÓPEZ & CARMEN OSPINA
BEIRUT NOIR (LEBANON), edited by IMAN HUMAYDAN
BELFAST NOIR (NORTHERN IRELAND), edited by ADRIAN MCKINTY & STUART NEVILLE
BOSTON NOIR, edited by DENNIS LEHANE
BOSTON NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by DENNIS LEHANE, JAIME CLARKE & MARY COTTON
BRONX NOIR, edited by S.J. ROZAN
BROOKLYN NOIR, edited by TIM MCLOUGHLIN
BROOKLYN NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by TIM MCLOUGHLIN
BROOKLYN NOIR 3: NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH, edited by TIM MCLOUGHLIN & THOMAS ADCOCK
BUFFALO NOIR, edited by BRIGID HUGHES & ED PARK