Nick Petrie
Nick Petrie received his MFA in fiction from the University of Washington and won a Hopwood Award for short fiction while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. His story “At the Laundromat” won the 2006 Short Story Contest in The Seattle Review, a national literary journal.
The Drifter, Nick’s first novel, won the International Thriller Writers’ Thriller Award and the Barry Award for Best First Novel, and was short-listed for the Edgar and Anthony Awards, as well as the Hammett Prize for Best Novel. He was named one of Apple’s 10 Writers to Read in 2017, and won the 2016 Literary Award from the Wisconsin Library Association.
His books in the Peter Ash series are The Drifter, Burning Bright, Light It Up, and the forthcoming Tear It Down. A husband and father, he has worked as a carpenter, cabinetmaker, furniture builder, remodeling contractor, and building inspector. He lives in Milwaukee.
On American Stories:
I read everything out there, but I write crime fiction because I’m most interested in life on the margins of America. Writing crime novels allow me to explore an America that many people never experience. My work has covered subjects as diverse as an Iraq war veteran’s view of post-crash Milwaukee, unintended consequences of Silicon Valley technology, the newly legal world of Colorado Cannabis cultivation, and in Tear It Down, my forthcoming book, race and class in Memphis. All while telling fast-paced, surprising, and moving stories filled with vivid characters who usually behave quite badly.
Liam Callanan
Liam is the winner of the 2017 George W. Hunt, SJ Prize in Arts, Letters & Journalism. He’s the author of The Cloud Atlas (Delacorte, 2004; Dial, 2005), All Saints (Delacorte, 2007; Dial, 2008), Listen (Four Way, 2015), and the forthcoming Paris by the Book (Dutton, 2018); his work has been or will be translated into Chinese, German, Italian, and Japanese.
He serves in the English department of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and was previously its chair, as well as coordinator of its Ph.D. program in creative writing. He has regularly contributed to local and national public radio, and is possibly the only person now living (but consult your own Venn diagram) who has written for all of the following: the Wall Street Journal (on zeppelins, jetpacks, and touring Paris and Greece with children’s books), The Awl, Medium, Commonweal, Esquire.com (on swimming and flying), Slate, the New York Times Book Review, the Times op-ed page, the Washington Post Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Forbes FYI, Good Housekeeping, Parents, Milwaukee Magazine,Brain,Child and elsewhere.
His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of literary journals, including Gulf Coast, the New Haven Review, Tinge (where his story was named one of the Millions Writers Award Notable Stories of 2011 by storySouth), the Writers Chronicle, Blackbird, Crab Orchard Review, Southern Indiana Review, Caketrain, failbetter and Phoebe. Liam is also the creator and co-executive producer of the Poetry Everywhere animated film series.