Naomi Hirahara: Santa Cruz Noir

Margaret Elysia Garciais the author of the short story collections Sad Girls & Other Stories and Mary of the Chance Encounters . She is cofounder of the microtheater company Pachuca Productions. She is also completing her first nonfiction manuscript, Throwing the Curve , about the world of plus-size alternative models.

Ariel Goreis an award-winning editor and the author of ten books, including Atlas of the Human Heart, The End of Eve , and We Were Witches . She teaches online at Ariel Gore’s School for Wayward Writers.

Seana Graham’sshort stories have appeared in the journals Eleven Eleven and Salamander Magazine , and the anthology The Very Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet . She is the book review editor at Escape Into Life .

Vinnie Hansen,a Claymore Award finalist, fled the howling winds of the South Dakota prairie and headed for the California coast the day after high school graduation. She is the author of numerous short stories and the Carol Sabala mystery series. Still sane after twenty-seven years of teaching high school English, Hansen has retired and lives in Santa Cruz with her husband and the requisite cat.

Naomi Hiraharais the Edgar Award — winning author of two mystery series set in Southern California. Her Mas Arai series, which features a Hiroshima survivor and gardener, ends with the publication of Hiroshima Boy in 2018. The first in her Officer Ellie Rush, Bicycle Cop mystery series received the T. Jefferson Parker Mystery Award. Her father was a native of Watsonville, California.

Dillon Kaiserhas lived in Santa Cruz County most of his life. He now lives in Sacramento with his wife and daughter, but part of him will always think of Watsonville as home. He holds a BA in comparative literature from UC Davis.

Beth Lisickis a writer and actor. She is the author of five books, including the New York Times best seller Everybody into the Pool . She cofounded San Francisco’s Porchlight Storytelling Series, traveled the country with the Sister Spit performance tours, and received a Creative Work Fund grant for a chapbook series with Creativity Explored, a studio for artists with developmental disabilities. Lisick grew up in San Jose and attended UC Santa Cruz.

Lou Mathewsis a journalist, fiction writer, playwright, and fourth-generation Angeleno. Married at nineteen, he worked his way through UC Santa Cruz as a gas station attendant and mechanic. His first novel, LA Breakdown , was a Los Angeles Times best book of the year. He has received an NEA fellowship in fiction, a Pushcart Prize, and a Katherine Anne Porter Prize. He has taught in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program since 1989.

Elizabeth McKenzie’snovel The Portable Veblen was long-listed for the 2016 National Book Award for fiction. She is the author of the novel MacGregor Tells the World and the story collection Stop That Girl . Her work has appeared in the New Yorker , the Atlantic , and The Best American Nonrequired Reading . McKenzie is senior editor of the Chicago Quarterly Review and the managing editor of Catamaran Literary Reader .

Calvin McMillinis a writer, teacher, and scholar. Born in Singapore and raised in rural Oklahoma, he went on to earn a PhD in literature from UC Santa Cruz. He is the author of the short story collection The Sushi Bar at the Edge of Forever, and the editor of Frank Chin’s novel The Confessions of a Number One Son . McMillin is currently a lecturer at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, where he teaches literature and creative writing.

Liza Monroyis the author of the novel Mexican High , the memoir The Marriage Act: The Risk I Took to Keep My Best Friend in America and What It Taught Us About Love , and Seeing As Your Shoes Are Soon to Be on Fire . She has written for the New York Times, O, Marie Claire, and the Los Angeles Times . Monroy currently teaches in the writing program at UC Santa Cruz.

Maceo Montoyahas published three works of fiction — The Scoundrel and the Optimist, The Deportation of Wopper Barraza, You Must Fight Them — and Letters to the Poet from His Brother. His most recent publication is Chicano Movement for Beginners , a work of graphic nonfiction. Montoya is an associate professor in Chicana/o Studies at UC Davis. He is also an affiliated faculty member of Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer, a community-based art center in Woodland, California.

Tommy Mooregraduated from UC Santa Cruz working in film and video production. In 2013, he was one of six writers selected for a PEN Emerging Voices Fellowship. He and his wife Amie recently welcomed their first child, Charles Joseph. They live in Malibu and Moore is currently writing a collection of short stories. “Buck Low” is his first published story.

Micah Perksis the author of We Are Gathered Here, What Becomes Us, Pagan Time , and Alone in the Woods: Cheryl Strayed, My Daughter, and Me . The Guardian rated What Becomes Us one of the top ten apocalyptic novels. Her short story collection True Love and Other Dreams of Miraculous Escape will be published in October 2018. She has lived in Santa Cruz for twenty years.

Lee Quarnstrom, author of When I Was a Dynamiter! Or, How a Nice Catholic Boy Became a Merry Prankster, a Pornographer, and a Bridegroom Seven Times , lives with his wife, poet Christine Quarnstrom, in Southern California. He was a legendary newspaper reporter in Santa Cruz for more than thirty years.

Peggy Townsendis an award-winning journalist who has written on everything from serial killers to county fairs. She divides her time between Santa Cruz and Lake Tahoe. Her new mystery novel is See Her Run.

Jill Wolfsonis the author of four young adult novels. Her story in this collection stems from her decades as a writing teacher for incarcerated teens and from her son’s stint working for a local donut shop. She is a Santa Cruz — based writer whose work has appeared in many publications, including the Sun magazine and on the radio show This American Life .

In addition to the talent and camaraderie of the Santa Cruz Noir writers, I have critical friends and artists to acknowledge. First, the out-of-town pros: fellow noir author and editor extraordinaire Ariel Gore and Akashic Books publisher Johnny Temple.

My appreciation and thanks to: Kat Bailey, Joe Mancino, Tristan Miley-Medina, Jennifer Taillac Gustafson, Shmuel Thaler, Carter Wilson, Don Wallace, the UCSC Creative Writing Program, Bookshop Santa Cruz — let’s do a sequel. Thank you to my family, Jon and Aretha, who know every crevice of Santa Cruz better than I do. And, always by my side, my late father Bill Bright and his poet friends William Everson and Gary Snyder, for my earliest Santa Cruz memories and precontact inspirations.

— S.B.