Fiction

See also: Mystery

Jessica Abel is best known for her comic-book series of short fiction, Artbabe, and journalistic comics such as Radio: An illustrated Guide. She is also the author of a collection of short stories, Mirror Window. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband Matt Madden.
Joel Agee is the author of Twelve Years: An American Boyhood in East Germany. His essays and stories have appeared in publications such as Harper’s, The New Yorker, and The Best American Essays, as well as Archipelago.org.
Dwight Allen is a graduate of Lawrence University and the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. His stories have been published in many literary magazines and anthologies, including the Georgia Review and Shenandoah.
Jean Maria Arrigo, a social psychologist, studies ethics of military and political intelligence operations. As a fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, she is editing stories derived from her childhood visits to remote South American Indians.
Robert L. Ashcom has spent most of his life with horses and hounds. He is a former joint Master and Huntsman to the Tryon Hounds in North Carolina. He is an associate professor of English at Lord Fairfax Community College. He lives in Warrenton, Virginia.
Juliana Baggott has published dozens of short stories and poems in such publications as The Southern Review, Poetry, and Ms. Magazine. She won the 1998 Eyster Prize for short fiction. Girl Talk is her first novel.

David Baldacci has published six novels. Best known for his thrillers, his most recent book Wish You Well is a departure from such fare. Baldacci has also authored six original screenplays. He earned a BA from Virginia Commonwealth University and a law degree from the University of Virginia. Mr. Baldacci still resides in Virginia.
John Banville has written several novels including The Book of Evidence, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize, and has received a literary award from the Lannan Foundation. The former literary editor of the Irish Times, he lives in Dublin.
Carrie Brown teaches creative writing at Sweet Briar College. The Hatbox Baby is her third novel.
John Gregory Brown, author of Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery and The Wrecked, Blessed Body of Shelton Lafleur, is the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Sweet Briar College. He has received a Lyndhurst Prize, the Lillian Smith Award and the Steinbeck Award.
Kate Burke is an Associate Professor of Drama at the University of Virginia.
John Casey, author of the National Book Award-winning Spartina, teaches creative writing at the University of Virginia. His most recent novel, The Half-Life of Happiness, is set in Charlottesville.

Maud Casey was born in Iowa City, Iowa, grew up Charlottesville and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. She earned her MFA from the University of Arizona and received a Pushcart Prize 1997 Special Mention.
Griffith Chaussee teaches Hindi and Urdu at UVA while finishing his Ph.D. at UW-Madison. He is a former associate editor of The Annual of Urdu Studies.
Charlie Clark, author of Finish High School at Home, is an editor for an education non-profit and has been a writer and editor for The Washington Post, Congressional Quarterly and Time Life-Books. He lives in Arlington, Virginia with his wife and two daughters.
Martin Clark is the author of The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living, a New York Times Notable Book for 2000, as well as a Book-of-the-Month Club and Quality Paperback selection. He is a judge in the Twenty-first Judicial District of Virginia.
Patrick Cribben is the author of Feast of Stephen, which won the Virginia Prize for playwriting. His play Fall into Winter received the Southern Playwriting Award, as well as the Critics Choice at the Festival of Southern Theater. He writes for 64 magazine.
John Crigler, composer-guitarist, composed the music for The Blood River Epic. He graduated from Berklee College of Music.
Clyde Edgerton, author of Where Trouble Sleeps, was born in Bethesda, North Carolina. He was an Air Force pilot before returning to college to get degrees in education. He has written seven novels, lives in Durham, North Carolina, and teaches creative writing at UNC-Wilmington.
Paticia Elam is a freelance writer and commentator who has appeared on NPR, NBC News, CNN and the BBC. A winner of the O. Henry Award, she has taught creative writing at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland and Goucher College. She lives in Washington, D.C.
Barbara Esstman, author of Night Ride Home, teaches writing and lives with her children outside Washington, DC. Her first novel, The Other Anna, was sold to Hallmark Hall of Fame and produced as the TV movie, Secrets.
Aaron Even was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Herndon, Virginia. In 1995, he received an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Virginia. His first novel, Bloodroot, won the AWP/Thomas Dunne Books Award. He currently teaches literature in the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College, Chicago.
Hector Feliciano has been an author, translator, journalist, lecturer, editor-in-chief and art consultant. His book, The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World’s Greatest Works of Art, stimulated the international investigations and debates about the provenance of art work from the Nazi era.
Robert Finley teaches literature and creative writing at the Universite Ste-Anne in southwestern Nova Scotia, and is an associate editor of the bilingual arts journal Feux Chalins.
Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta, India and was educated in northern India and Oxford. His books include The Circle of Reason, In an Antique Land, The Shadow Lines and The Glass Palace. He has won two of India’s most prestigious literary awards and France’s Prix Medicis Etrangere.
Thomas Glave was born in the Bronx and grew up there and in Kingston, Jamaica. A graduate of Brown University, he traveled as a Fulbright Scholar in 1998-1999 to Jamaica. He is an assistant professor of English at SUNY, Binghampton.
Rebecca Goldstein is the author of The Mind-Body Problem, Mazel and Properties of Light. She teaches creative writing at Columbia and is the recipient of the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant.
Lois Gould is the author of eight novels and the recent memoir Mommy Dressing, which was named best non-fiction book of the year by The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. She has taught creative writing at New York University, Wesleyan and Boston University, as well as in Ireland and India.
Kate Hamilton dabbles in poetry and prose, athletics, music and restauranteuring, having lived in the shadow of the Rotunda since her undergraduate days. She is a member of the Moseley Writers Group.
Christie Hodgen earned her BA at the University of Virginia. She attended the MFA program at the University of Indiana and now resides in Louisville, KY. She was the winner of the 2000 Tobias Wolff Award for fiction.


Robert Huekstedt teaches Sanskrit and Hindi at UVa where he is Chair of the Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures Department.
Agymah Kamau, a native of Barbados, attended Baruch College, City University of New York, where he earned a B.B.A. in finance and an M.S. degree in economics. He received an MFA in English from VCU. He is currently working on his third novel.
Jan Karon, author of At Home in Mitford and the Mitford series, was nominated three times for an ABBY by the American Booksellers Association. Her most recent novel, A Common Life, is due in April 2001. NB: Reception Hostess, not reading.
Ben Katchor, MacArthur fellow, is a cartoonist, illustrator and creator of the cartoon strips Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer and The Cardboard Valise. He is the author of the graphic novels The Jew of New York and The Beauty Supply District. He teaches at the school of Visual Arts in New York City.
N.M. Kelby is the winner of a Bush Artist Fellowship in Literature and the Heekin Group Foundation’s James Fellowship for the Novel. Her poems and short stories have appeared in Francis Ford Copola’s Zoetrope: All-Story Extra and The Mississippi Review.
Rosa Turner Knapp, author of the e-book Volcano, edits and writes essays and articles on the Internet. Her fiction e-books and trade paperbacks are available from Crossroads, Zebra and Pulsar.
Curt Leviant, author of Partita in Venice and The Man Who Thought He Was the Messiah, was a Writing Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts. He has also won fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Jerusalem Foundation.

Graciela Limón, author of The Day of the Moon, is a Chicana-Latina writer and a native of Los Angeles. She is Chair of Chicana and Chicano Studies and a professor of U.S. Hispanic Literature at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
David Wong Louie, of Venice, California, is the author of The Barbarians Are Coming. His short story collection, Pangs of Love, was a New York Times Notable Book and winner of first fiction book awards from the Los Angeles Times and Ploughshares.
Matt Madden is a cartoonist and illustrator living in Brooklyn, New York with his wife, Jessica Abel. He writes for the Comics Journal. He is the author of a graphic novel, Black Candy, and has a forthcoming book, Odds Off.
Paule Marshall was raised in Brooklyn, NY, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brooklyn University. She has received a John Dos Passos Award for Literature, an American Book Award, and a MacArthur Fellowship. She holds a distinguished chair in the Creative Writing Program in the Department of English at NYU.
Clint McCown, author of The Member-Guest, grew up in the South. He has twice won the American Fiction Prize. He chairs the creative writing program at Beloit College.
Christi Merrill teaches Hindi and South Asian literature at UVA. She has an MFA in Translation, an MFA in Non-Fiction Writing and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Iowa.
Heather Ross Miller’s fiction includes the stories of In the Funny Papers and the novel Champeen. Her newest book is a memoir, Crusoe’s Island. Miller is a Thomas H. Broadus Professor of English at Washington and Lee University.
Robert Morgan, a native of North Carolina, has won numerous awards for his poetry and novels, including four fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. His Gap Creek was made an Oprah’s Book Club selection. Morgan is an English professor at Cornell University.
Charlotte Morgan’s novel, One August Day, was nominated for the Library of Virginia Fiction Award. Her work has appeared in Pushcart Prize 2000 edition, Phobe, Pearle, Thema and other literary magazines.
Virginia B. Morton, Culpeper resident, hopes her new novel, Marching Through Culpeper, will promote tourism and preservation in the region. The former teacher conducts Civil War Walking Tours of the historic downtown area.
Matt O’Keefe, author of You Think You Hear, was born and raised in Wilmington, Delaware, and graduated from Vanderbilt University. He currently lives outside Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Vincent Panella, a writing instructor at Vermont Law School, has worked as a newspaper reporter and a magazine journalist. He earned his MFA from The Iowa Writer’s Workshop and is the author of The Other Side: Growing Up Italian in America. 3/23 4 p.m.
Sheila Gulley Pleasants is Director of Artists’ Services at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. 3/22 10 am.
Joe Ashby Porter’s new novel, Resident Aliens, takes place mainly in Charlottesville in the 1970s. His other fiction includes the novel Eelgrass and the collections The Kentucky Stories and Lithuania. 3/24 12 p.m.
Deborah M. Prum is the author of Rats, Bulls and Flying Machines: A History of the Renaissance and co-author of Emperors and Empresses, A History of Old Russia. Her fiction has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review and FOLIO. 3/25 1:30 p.m.
Mara Purl, once Nurse Darla on the soap opera "Days of Our Lives," is the author of a series of books based on her radio soap opera "Milford-Haven, U.S.A.," broadcast on the BBC. She also wrote Act Right with Erin Gray. 3/22 10 a.m.
Elwood Reid is the author of the novel If I Don’t Six and the short story collection What Salmon Know. A regular contributor to GQ, he lives in Brooklyn, New York. 3/24 2 p.m.
Kristen Staby Rembold’s first novel, Felicity, was winner of the Mid-List First Novel Series Award. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals as well as in chapbook form. Rembold, the former editor of IRIS, has just completed a second novel. 3/24 4 p.m.
Mark Richard is the author of two short story collections, The Ice at the Bottom of the World and Charity, and a novel Fishboy. He was a story editor for the TV shows "Chicago Hope," and "Party of Five." Two of his feature scripts are in pre-production, a movie-of-the-week and an original adaptation of his own work. 3/24 2 p.m.
Thane Rosenbaum is the author of the novel-in-stories Elijah Visible, which was awarded the Wallant Prize for best book of Jewish American fiction. A professor in human rights law and a teacher of creative writing, he is Tikkun magazine’s literary editor and writes reviews for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other publications. 3/22 2 p.m.
Geoff Schmidt, author of Write Your Heart Out: Advice from the Moon Winks Hotel, teaches creative writing and composition at Illinois Valley Community College and recently received an award from the Illinois Arts Council. 3/24 10 a.m., 3/25 3 p.m.
Beth Schrank is a fiction instructor at the Charlottesville Writing Center. She had a short story published in The Georgia Review and is working on a novel. 3/25 3 p.m.
John Searles is a Senior Books Editor at Cosmopolitan and teaches writing at Marymount Manhattan College. He has published work in The Washington Post, Redbook, and Maxim. This spring marks his debut as a novelist with Boy Still Missing. 3/24 4 p.m.
Rosa Shand’s first novel, The Gravity of Sunlight, was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and she now holds an individual artist’s fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work appears in The Southern Review, Shenandoah and The Virginia Quarterly. 3/22 10 a.m.
Karen Shepard, author of An Empire of Women, has published fiction in The Southwest Review and The Mississippi Review. She lives and teaches at Williams College in Western Massachusetts. 3/24 2 p.m.
Jim Shepard, author of five novels and one story collection, teaches film and literature at Williams College. He is the co-editor of two anthologies, You’ve Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories That Held Them in Awe and Unleashed: Poems by Writers’ Dogs. 3/24 10 a.m.
Jane R. Shippen is a native Atlantan who has lived in New York, Lynchburg and Buenos Aires. Her latest work will appear in New Stories of the South 2001. 3/24 2 p.m.
George Singleton, author of These People Are Us, has had stories in Harper’s, Playboy, The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, Glimmert Train, The North American Review and four volumes of New Stories of the South. 3/24 2 p.m.
Lee Smith is the author of two story collections and nine novels, including The Christmas Letters, Saving Grace and Fair and Tender Ladies. Collaborating with the communication students of Grundy High School, she produced an oral history of her Virginia hometown, entitled Sitting on the Courthouse Bench. 3/22 12 p.m., 1 p.m., 2 p.m., 3/23 8 p.m.
Leah Stewart, author of Body of a Girl, has written short stories which appeared in the Kenyon Review and other publications. A former associate editor of Doubletake magazine, she lives outside Chapel Hill, North Carolina. 3/23 10 a.m.
Aoibheann Sweeney teaches Commercial Nonfiction at the Charlottesville Writing Center. She has an MFA in fiction from UVa and is a freelance writer for the New York Times. 3/25 3 p.m.
William Tester, author of the novel Darling and the short story collection Head, is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship for Fiction, the Hob Broun Prize and the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. He lives in Richmond and teaches creative writing at VCU. 3/25 3 p.m.
Jonathan Tropper, author of Plan B, received his graduate degree in writing at NYU. He lives in New York with his wife and son, and is at work on his second novel. 3/23 10 a.m.
Jeanne Vanderhoef is the author of a memoir called Gibbons in the Family Tree. Her mother, Janet Lambert, was an author of girls’ fiction, including Don’t Cry Little Girl and Just Jennifer. 3/22 4 p.m., 3/23 10 a.m.
Anne Newton Walther is an author, lecturer and head of a counseling firm in San Francisco. The Virginia native received a BA in International Affairs from Sweet Briar College and now lives in San Francisco with her husband and five children. 3/23 4 p.m.
Carl Weber is the president of African American Bookstore, Inc., a chain of ethnic bookstores in Long Island and Queens, NY. He graduated from Virginia State University with a BS in accounting and has an MBA in marketing from the University of Virginia. He lives on Long Island, NY. 3/23 10 a.m.
Luke Whisnant’s fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous magazines, and his stories have been reprinted in multiple collections. He is an associate professor of English at East Carolina University. 3/23 2 p.m.
Michiko Wilson teaches Japanese language and literature at UVa. She is the author of The Marginal World of Oe Kenzaburo, the first book-length critical work on the Nobel Laureate, and translator of his The Pinch Runner Memorandum. She is completing a translation of Minako Oba’s Birds Crying.3/24 10 a.m.
Wayne Wilson is the author of the novel Loose Jam. A graphic artist and editor in Massachusetts, he teaches fiction writing at the Harvard Extension School. 3/24 2 p.m.
Matt Witten is the author of the Jacob Burns mystery series, set in his home town of Saratoga Springs, New York. Currently he lives in Los Angeles, where he is a story editor for the long-running hit NBC TV series, "Law & Order." 3/24 2 p.m.


Mystery
Christine Andreae lives with her husband in Bentonville, Virginia. She is the author of a mystery series and the thriller, Smoke Eaters.
Frankie Bailey, author of Death’s Favorite Child and the Edgar-nominated Out of the Woodpile: Black Characters in Crime and Detective Fiction, is an academic who has managed to incorporate her love of crime fiction and films into her work as a criminologist.
John Ballinger is an owner of The Bookpress Ltd., an antiquarian book business in Williamsburg, Virginia. He is the author of two bibliomysteries: The Williamsburg Forgeries and a new novel, The Jefferson Letters.
Janet Benrey, co-author of Little White Lies, was a successful entrepreneur, a professional photographer and an executive recruiter before turning to writing, editing and book promotion.
Ron Benrey, co-author of Little White Lies, has bylined more than a thousand articles, six published books and scores of speeches for CEOs of Fortune-100 companies. He taught advanced business writing courses at the University of Pittsburgh.
Baron De Vere-Austin of Delvin (Raymond Austin) is a distinguished film maker, director, producer and screenwriter best known for his work in US and UK televison, including Hawaii 5-0, The Prisoner, Magnum PI, The Fall Guy and Simon and Simon. His first novel is entitled The Eagle Heist, A Beauford Sloan Mystery.
Gloria Taylor Edwards is a native of Richmond and has been writing professionally for nearly a decade. Death Will Pay the Debt — a mystery novel inspired by true events —i s her third book.
Joe Fontana, author of The Pentum Mission, is a former senior partner with the Chicago-based law firm Winston & Strawn and has spent the past thirty years negotiating international business transactions and other foreign investments throughout the world. He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with his wife.
Elizabeth Foxwell is a founding director of the DC mystery convention Malice Domestic Ltd., and a contributing editor to the magazine Mystery Scene. Foxwell has published five historical-mystery short stories and edited or co-edited eight mystery anthologies.
Marshall Frank, author of Beyond the Call, is a retired captain from the Metro-Dade Police Department in Miami, Florida, where he spent the majority of his thirty years investigating murders. He lives in Maggie Valley, North Carolina.
Anne Underwood Grant is the author of the Sydney Teague mystery series, including Multiple Listing, Smoke Screen, Cuttings and Voices in the Sand. She lives in Mills River, North Carolina.
Carolyn Hart is the author of twelve Death on Demand novels. She is also the creator of the Henrie O series and is a founder of Sisters in Crime.
Willetta L. Heising has been collecting fans and awards since 1995 for her mystery series reader's guides, Detecting Women and Detecting Men. Watch for Willetta's Guide to Police Detective Series and Willetta's Guide to Private Eye Series in October 2001.
John Jasper, author of Sweet Poison of Misused Wine, lives in Washington, D.C., and practices environmental and Native American Indian law.
Lisa Kleinholz is a former journalist and potter. Her series featuring reporter-mom Zoë Szabo debuted with Exiles on Main Street. The sequel Dancing with Mr. D made the South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s "Best Mysteries of 2000" list.
Kayla McGrady is author of Dead Ball Foul, a Silver Dagger Mystery. She is seventeen years old and lives in Gate City, Virginia.
Ann McMillan writes Civil War mysteries set in Richmond, Virginia, featuring Narcissa Powers, a Confederate nurse, and Judah Daniel, a free black healer.
Miriam Grace Monfredo, author of Brothers of Cain and Sisters of Cain, is a historian and former librarian who lives in Rochester, New York, the scene of her Glynis Tryon/Seneca Falls historical mystery series.
Gaye Newton has published song lyrics on the CD Happy Together by the Lafayette Harries, Jr. Trio featuring Melba Moore. Her poetry has appeared in Bma: The Sonia Sanchez Literary Review.
Brewster Milton Robertson, author of Rainy Days and Sundays, is a member of the Southern Book Critics Circle. His work has appeared in Chattahoochee Review, Publisher’s Weekly, USA Weekend and the Los Angeles Times Book Page.
Daniel Stashower is a recent Edgar and Agatha award winner for Teller of Tales: The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His most recent mystery novels are The Dime Museum Murders and The Floating Lady Murders, featuring Harry Houdini.
Elizabeth Daniels Squire

We mourn the untimely passing of Ms. Squire. We are thinking of her family and many mystery friends at this time.
Rosemary Stevens is a Regency England Scholar and a confirmed Anglophile. She is the author of Death on a Silver Tray, the new Beau Brummell mystery series.
Andy Straka’s first novel, A Witness Above, featuring Charlottesville-based private eye and falconer Frank Pavlicek, is to be published in May 2001. His writing has also appeared in Albemarle and Blue Ridge Outdoors.
Mary V. Welk, author of To Kill a King, is the author of two other mysteries, Something Wicked in the Air and A Deadly Little Christmas. She lives in Chicago.