Born in the Four Corners region of New Mexico, Mark Coggins is an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation. He earned two degrees and a Phi Beta Kappa Key from Stanford University and has worked for a number of Silicon Valley computer and venture capital firms, including Netscape Communications and Hewlett Packard Company.

While at Stanford, he studied literature and creative writing with Tobias Wolff, N. Scott Momaday and Ron Hansen and wrote the first story featuring his series character August Riordan in a class taught by Hansen. This story, “There’s No Such Thing as Private Eyes,” was later published in The New Black Mask, vol. 4, Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich.

His books have been nominated for the Shamus and the Barry crime fiction awards and have been selected for best of the year lists compiled by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Detroit Free Press among others.

Runoff and The Big Wake-Up won the Next Generation Indie Book Award and the Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) respectively, both in the crime fiction category. The Immortal Game was optioned for a film.

Coggins has published short fiction in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and the anthology Masters of Technique, as well as nonfiction in View Camera and Distributed Object Computing magazines.

He is also a photographer. He works with a range of subjects, but focuses on candid, black and white images taken in public—aka “street photography.” He has won numerous awards and competitions, including being shortlisted in the 2023 Photo Review Competition, receiving an award of excellence by the All-Japan Association of Photographic Societies and winning first place in the 2023 Ribbet Emerging Photographer Competition.

His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the United States and Europe and has been featured in a variety of on-line and print publications, including cover images for both fiction and nonfiction books. His own photography monograph, Street Stories, was published by Poltroon Press in 2021.

James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the acclaimed L.A. Qurtet - The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential and White Jazz, as well as the Underworld USA trilogy: American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand and Blood's a Rover. He is the author of one work of non-fiction, The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women. Ellroy lives in Los Angeles.

Samuel Dashiell Hammett (/ˈsæmjʊəl dəˈʃiːl ˈhæmət/; May 27, 1894 – January 10, 1961) was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, a screenplay writer, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), and the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse).

In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on film, Hammett "is now widely regarded as one of the finest mystery writers of all time" and was called, in his obituary in The New York Times, "the dean of the... 'hard-boiled' school of detective fiction." Time magazine included Hammett's 1929 novel Red Harvest on a list of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Unknown [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Kevin is a Chicago writer, actor and director. His published works include "Confessions of a Transylvanian," written with Ronald Fox, "Invading Nirvana: a Chicagoan in the City of Angels" (published by Fort Raphael Publishing) and adaptations of both Thomas Heywood's play "The Fair Maid of the West" and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Sign of the Four," the latter of which was written in conjunction with Shanghai Low Theatricals (both published by Dramatic Publishing).

Apart from his writing, Kevin has been an actor on stage and screen in Chicago for over 30 years. He has appeared on stage in the roles of Salieri in "Amadeus," the title role in "Richard III," George in "Of Mice and Men," Edward in "Someone Who'll Watch Over Me" (Jeff Award nomination, Best Actor) and Mr. Lockhart in "The Seafarer" (Jeff Award winner, Best Ensemble).

Kevin is also a director for the stage, having been thrice nominated for Jeff Awards for his direction of his own "Fair Maid of the West," City Lit's production of "Jeeves and the Mating Season," and greasy joan and co.'s "The Mandrake." Kevin has directed over thirty shows in Chicago, including an adaptation of Terry Prachett's "Monstrous Regiment" for Lifeline Theatre, "A Moon for the Misbegotten" for Seanachai Theatre and numerous shows for the Oak Park Festival Theatre.

He has also appeared on television in NBC's "Chicago Fire" and "Chicago PD", Fox's "Empire" and ABC's "Betrayal."

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Founder of Blue Crab Books, publishing literary classics, practical guides, and imaginative children's stories.

Joanne O’Brien is a writer, editor, and publisher and the founder of Blue Crab Books, an independent imprint dedicated to thoughtfully restored editions of classic literature and the publication of original works.

Through Blue Crab Books she publishes carefully designed editions of literary classics, practical guides for writers and creators, and children’s books that celebrate imagination, curiosity, and the natural world. Her children’s stories introduce young readers to memorable characters and gentle adventures with themes of family, friendship, and a love of nature.

Joanne holds a degree in English Literature from the University of Toronto and brings a deep respect for literary tradition to every book she writes and publishes.

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