Claire McNab was the pseudonym of Claire Carmichael (1940-2022), an Australian writer born in Melbourne. While pursuing a career as a high school teacher in Sydney, she began her writing career with comedy plays and textbooks. She left teaching in the mid-1980s to become a full-time writer. In her native Australia, she is known for her self-help and children's books.
She was best-known for 14 crime novels featuring the highly popular Detective-Inspector Carol Ashton and six featuring undercover agent Denise Cleever. Her latest series features Kylie Kendall, an Australian transplanted to Los Angeles, who determines to become a private investigator in order to pursue her father's business and his business partner.
McNab served as the president of Sisters in Crime and was a member of both the Mystery Writers of America and the Science Fiction Writers of America. She is a 2006 Medal Winner of the Alice B. Awards [1] and was nominated for the 1996 Lammy Award Lesbian Mystery Award. [2] She moved to Los Angeles in 1994 after falling in love with an American woman, and taught not-yet-published writers through the UCLA Writers' Extension Program. [3]
In addition to crime fiction, McNab has published children's novels, picture books, self-help, and English textbooks.
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Faye Marder Kellerman is an American writer of mystery novels, in particular the "Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus" series, as well as three nonseries books, The Quality of Mercy, Moon Music, and Straight into Darkness.
Sue Taylor Grafton was an American author of detective novels. She is best known as the author of the "alphabet series" featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone in the fictional city of Santa Teresa, California. The daughter of detective novelist, C. W. Grafton, she said the strongest influence on her crime novels was author Ross Macdonald. Before her success with this series, she wrote screenplays for television movies.
Michael Joseph Connelly is an American author of detective novels and other crime fiction, notably those featuring LAPD Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller. Connelly is the bestselling author of 38 novels and one work of non-fiction, with over 74 million copies of his books sold worldwide and translated into 40 languages. His first novel, The Black Echo, won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1992. In 2002, Clint Eastwood directed and starred in the movie adaptation of Connelly's 1997 novel, Blood Work. In March 2011, the movie adaptation of Connelly's novel The Lincoln Lawyer starred Matthew McConaughey as Mickey Haller. Connelly was the President of the Mystery Writers of America from 2003 to 2004.
Sara Paretsky is an American author of detective fiction, best known for her novels focused on the protagonist V. I. Warshawski.
Katherine V. Forrest is a Canadian-born American writer, best known for her novels about lesbian police detective Kate Delafield. Her books have won and been finalists for Lambda Literary Award twelve times, as well as other awards. She has been referred to by some "a founding mother of lesbian fiction writing."
Naiad Press (1973–2003) was an American publishing company, one of the first dedicated to lesbian literature. At its closing it was the oldest and largest lesbian/feminist publisher in the world.
Elizabeth Sims is an American writer, journalist, and contributing editor at Writer's Digest magazine. She is a former correspondent for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and author of two series of crime novels, including her Rita Farmer Mystery Series, originally published by St. Martin's Press Minotaur and Lillian Byrd Crime Series, originally published by Alyson Books.
Lori L. Lake is an American writer of fiction, mainly about lesbian protagonists. She is also an editor, writing instructor, and former publisher.
The Alice B Readers Award is given annually to living writers of lesbian fiction whose careers are distinguished by consistently well-written stories about lesbians. Named for Alice B. Toklas, the award is given once, only, in appreciation of career achievement. In addition to the medal, each recipient is given a lapel pin and a significant honorarium.
Sarah Dreher was an American lesbian novelist and playwright, and best known for her award-winning lesbian mystery series featuring amateur sleuth Stoner McTavish.
Leslie S. Klinger is an American attorney and writer. He is a noted literary editor and annotator of classic genre fiction, including the Sherlock Holmes stories and the novels Dracula, Frankenstein, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as well as Neil Gaiman's The Sandman comics, Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons's graphic novel Watchmen, the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, and Neil Gaiman's American Gods.
Jean Bedford is an English-born Australian writer who is best known for her crime fiction, but who has also written novels and short stories, as well as nonfiction. She is also an editor and journalist, and has taught creative writing in several universities for over 20 years.
Jerrilyn Farmer is an American mystery fiction writer, author of a series of humorous 'cozy' mysteries featuring Hollywood caterer 'Madeline Bean'.
Anne Laughlin is a writer from Chicago, Illinois. She is the author of seven novels of crime fiction, as well as many published short stories. Laughlin was named an emerging writer by the Lambda Literary Foundation in 2008 and 2014 and was awarded a writing residency at Ragdale. She has been awarded four Goldie Awards from the Golden Crown Literary Society, as well as shortlisted three times for Lambda Literary Awards. She has also been awarded an Alice B Readers Award for excellence in lesbian fiction.
Penny Mickelbury is an African-American playwright, short story writer, mystery series writer, and historical novelist who worked as a print and television journalist for ten years before concentrating on fiction writing. After leaving journalism, she taught fiction and script writing in Los Angeles and saw two of her plays produced there. She began writing detective novels with Keeping Secrets, published by Naiad Press in 1994, in the first of a series featuring Gianna Maglione, a lesbian chief of a hate-crimes unit based in Washington, D.C., and her lover 'Mimi Patterson', a journalist. Her second series of four books features Carole Ann Gibson, a Washington, D.C., attorney, who is widowed in the first book and subsequently runs an investigation agency with Jake Graham, the detective who investigated her husband's death. Her third series features Phil Rodriguez, a Puerto Rican private investigator on the Lower Easter Side of New York City. Mickelbury has also written short story collections and historical novels highlighting the Black experience in America.
Jessie Chandler is an American author of mystery and humorous caper fiction, most of which is about lesbian protagonists. Her work includes the Shay O'Hanlon Caper Series, many short stories, and other novels. Chandler has presented talks about the craft of writing, serves as a mentor to many up-and-coming writers, and is a contributing member of The Golden Crown Literary Society, Sisters in Crime, and serves on the board of Mystery Writers of America.
Megan Abbott is an American author of crime fiction and of non-fiction analyses of hardboiled crime fiction. Her novels and short stories have drawn from and re-worked classic subgenres of crime writing from a female perspective. She is also an American writer and producer of television.
Cheryl A. Head is an American author, and former television producer, organizer, and broadcast executive. She is the author of the award-winning Charlie Mack Motown mysteries, whose female PI protagonist is queer and Black. She is also author of Time's Undoing published in 2023. Head is a two-time Anthony Award nominee, a two-time Lambda Literary Award finalist, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist, an Agatha Award Finalist, a three-time Next Generation Indie Book Award finalist, and winner of the Golden Crown Literary Society's Ann Bannon Popular Choice Award, and an IPPY Silver medal. Her books are included in the Detroit Public Library's African American Booklist and in the Special Collections of the Library of Michigan. In 2019, Head was named to the Hall of Fame of the New Orleans Saints and Sinners Literary Festival, and she was awarded the Alice B Reader Award in 2022.
ISBN 0-09-182953-4