Panel: On Tampa Bay Noir

Colette Bancroft has been the book editor at the Tampa Bay Times since 2007. In addition to writing reviews and interviewing authors, she directs the annual Tampa Bay Times Festival of Reading, and served two terms on the board of the National Book Critics Circle. Bancroft earned degrees in English from the University of South Florida and the University of Florida, and she wishes she had finished her dissertation on the novels of Raymond Chandler.

Michael Connelly is the bestselling author of thirty-five novels and one work of non-fiction. His very first novel, The Black Echo, won the prestigious Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1992. Clint Eastwood directed and starred in the 2002 movie adaptation of Connelly’s 1998 novel, Blood Work. His bestselling novel, The Lincoln Lawyer, was also adapted for a movie starring Matthew McConaughey. His most recent bestsellers include Dark Sacred Night, Two Kinds Of Truth, The Late Show, The Wrong Side Of Goodbye, and The Crossing. He is also the executive producer of Bosch, an Amazon Studios original drama series based on his bestselling character Harry Bosch. He is the creator and host of the podcast Murder Book. Connelly’s story “The Guardian” is part of the collection Tampa Bay Noir (Akashic Books) edited by Colette Bancroft

Sarah Gerard is the author of the essay collection Sunshine State, and the novel Binary Star. Her short stories, essays, interviews, and criticism have appeared in the New York Times, T Magazine, Granta, The Baffler, Vice, and the anthologies Tampa Noir, We Can’t Help it if We’re From Florida, and One Small Blow Against Encroaching Totalitarianism. Nina is a struggling writer, a college drop-out, a liar, and a cheater. More than anything she wants love. From the burned-out suburbs of Florida to the anonymous squalor of New York City, she eats through an incestuous cast of characters in search of it: her mother, a narcissistic lesbian; Odessa, a single mom with even worse taste in men than Nina; Seth, an artist; Brian, whose roller-coaster affair with Nina is the most stable “relationship” in his life; and Aaron, an aspiring filmmaker living at home with his parents. True Love (Harper) brings us into Nina’s quest for fulfillment and it’s a tale at once darkly comedic, acerbically acute, and painfully human. Publishers Weekly noted that “Gossip, sexual desire, and the uncompromising economics for aspiring artists guide the action in Gerard’s lurid, captivating tale [with] an arresting feminist layer. Gerard’s unflinching look at youthful desperation marks an exciting turn in her work.”