Panel: Miami Noir: The Classics

Lynne Barrett is the author of three short story collections The Secret Names of Women, The Land of Go, and Magpies. She also edited the anthology Making Good Time, True Stories of How We Do, and Don’t, Get Around in South Florida; the collection Tigertail: Florida Flash, and also co-edited Birth: A Literary Companion and The James M. Cain Cookbook, a collection of Cain’s nonfiction. Lynne’s book What Editors Want: A Must Read for Writers Submitting to Literary Magazines has recently gone into its second printing. She teaches at Florida International University and edits The Florida Book Review. Her story “The Noir Boudoir” is included in Miami Noir (Akashic Books) edited by Les Standiford

John Dufresne is the author of six novels: Louisiana Power & Light, Love Warps the Mind a Little, Deep in the Shade of Paradise, Requiem, Mass., No Regrets, Coyote, and I Don’t Like Where This Is Going.  He also wrote two short story collections: The Way That Water Enters Stone and Johnny Too Bad, as well as three chapbooks: Lethe, Cupid, Time and Love; Well Enough Alone; and I Will Eat a Piece of the Roof and You Can Eat the Window. He has two books on writing and creativity: The Lie That Tells a Truth: a Guide to Writing Fiction and Is Life Like This?: a Guide to Writing Your First Novel in Six Months. John was a 2012-13 Guggenheim Fellow and teaches in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami. His story “Lemonade and Paris Buns”  was included in Miami Noir: The Classics (Akashic Books) edited by Les Standiford.

Preston L. Allen is the author of the short story collection Churchboys and Other Sinners and the novels Every Boy Should Have a Man, All or Nothing and Jesus Boy.  His short stories have appeared in numerous literary journals and have been anthologized in Miami Noir, Las Vegas Noir, Brown Sugar, Wanderlust, Making the Hook Up, and Here We Are: an Anthology of South Florida Writers. His story “Superheroes” by Preston L. Allen (Opa-Locka, 2006) is included in Miami Noir (Akashic Books) edited by Les Standiford.

Les Standiford is the author of twenty-four books and novels, including the award-winning John Deal thriller series. His nonfiction publications include Last Train to Paradise, and Bringing Adam Home, a Wall Street Journal number one true crime best seller. He has previously edited the best-selling original 2006’s Miami Noir which featured brand-new stories from some of the city’s best living writers In Miami Noir: The Classics (Akashic Noir) Standiford turned his eye toward the outstanding noir fiction of yesteryear. The nineteen stories in this collection are divided in four parts: “Original Gangsters” (which includes the oldest story in the book, “Pineland” by Marjory Stoneman Douglas, written in 1925), “Perilous Streets, Lethal Causeways,” Miami’s Vices,” and “Gators & Ghouls.” In his introduction, Standiford notes that “When terrible things threaten in some ominous neighborhoods, in some tough cities, a reader of a story set in those locales might be forgiven for expecting the worst; but when calamity takes place against the backdrop of paradise, as we have here in Miami, the impact is all the greater.” Besides contributions by Stoneman Douglas and Standiford, the volume include stories by Elmore Leonard, Lester Dent, Zora Neale Hurston, Brett Halliday, Damon Runyon, Edna Buchanan, James Carlos Blake, Douglas Fairbairn, Charles Willeford, T.J. MacGregor, Lynne Barrett, Preston L. Allen, John Dufresne, Vicki Hendricks, Christine Kling, Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, and David Beaty. Kirkus Review praised it as “A collection that shows how far a city can come and still maintain a strong noir tradition.”