Denise Hamilton: Los Angeles Noir

NEALPOLLACK’Smemoir, Alternadad , was published by Pantheon in early 2007. The editor of Chicago Noir, Pollack lives in Los Angeles with his family. His website and blog, www.nealpollack.com, are generally informative and amusing.

CHRISTOPHERRICEis the New York Times best-selling author of three novels, mostly recently Light Before Day. A Lambda Literary Award-winner, he is also a regular columnist for the Advocate and is currently a visiting faculty member at the graduate writing program of Otis College of Art and Design. He lives in West Hollywood. For more information, visit www.christopherricebooks.com.

BRIANASCALONROLEY, a Los Angeles native, is the author of the novel American Son , which received the 2003 Association of Asian American Studies Prose Book Award. It was a New York Times Notable Book, one of the Los Angeles Times’ Best Books of the Year, and a finalist for the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize. More information can be found at www.brianroley.com.

LIENNASILVERwas born in Russia, and immigrated to the United States before Perestroyka came to the rescue. In Los Angeles, she began translating plays and screenplays, and cowrote a project for British Screen International. Her short stories have received numerous honorary awards, and she is working on a novel about contemporary Russia.

SUSANSTRAIGHTwas born in Riverside, where she still lives with her family. She has published six novels. Her latest, A Million Nightingales (Pantheon, 2006), set during slavery, is the first of a trilogy about the characters who appear in “The Golden Gopher.”

HÉCTORTOBARis the son of Guatemalan immigrants and the author of Translation Nation and The TattooedSoldier . Born in L.A., he has been editor of the bilingual San Francisco newspaper El Tecolote and features editor at the LA Weekly , and he has written for the New Yorker , the Nation, and other publications. He now reports for the Los Angeles Times from Mexico City, and is married with three children.

DIANAWAGMANis the author of three novels and the film Delivering Milo . She is the recipient of the 2001 PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction. She teaches in the film department at California State University, Long Beach.