Oakland Noir Paperback by Jerry Thompson; Eddie Muller

Product Details

• Publisher: Akashic Books, Ltd. (2017-04-11)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 278 pages
• ISBN-13: 9781617755309
• Item Weight: 306.18 grams
• Dimensions: 20.9 x 13.28 x 1.6 cm

California's noir quotient continues to rise with Oakland Noir, which reveals all the dark complexities of this increasingly prominent city.

“The legendarily tough California city of Oakland finally gets an entry in the Akashic noir series.” —Publishers Weekly

Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.

In the wake of San Francisco Noir, Los Angeles Noir, and Orange County Noir—all popular volumes in the Akashic Noir Series—comes the latest California installment, Oakland Noir. Masterfully curated by Jerry Thompson and Eddie Muller (the “Czar of Noir”), this volume will shock, titillate, provoke, and entertain. The diverse cast of talented contributors will not disappoint.

Brand-new stories by: Nick Petrulakis, Kim Addonizio, Keenan Norris, Keri Miki-Lani Schroeder, Katie Gilmartin, Dorothy Lazard, Harry Louis Williams II, Carolyn Alexander, Phil Canalin, Judy Juanita, Jamie DeWolf, Nayomi Munaweera, Mahmud Rahman, Tom McElravey, Joe Loya, and Eddie Muller.

From the introduction:

Jerry Thompson: "Discovering the wang-dang-doodle jams of the Pointer Sisters shifted my entire focus. Stunning black women were scatting and bebopping all the way into my soul. I think what we’ve put together in Oakland Noir is a volume where this city is a character in every story. He’s a slick brother strutting over a bacon-grease bass line and tambourine duet. She’s a white chick with a bucket of hot muffins heading to farmer and flea markets, to sell crafts and get hooked up with some fine kat with dreadlocks and a criminal record. And it’s in the faces of young fearless muthafuckers pounding keyboards and snapping fingers, lips, Snapchats, and Facebook timelines. It’s the core of not only Black Lives Matter but all lives matter. We are the children of fantasy and of the funk . . ."

Eddie Muller: "These days, writers and readers aren’t denying the darker parts of our existence as much as they used to, especially in crime fiction. Some writers just do it for fun, because it’s become the fashionable way to get published. You know, “gritty violence” and all that bullshit. The genuine darkness in noir stories comes from two places—the cruelty of the world’s innate indifference, and the cruelty that people foster within themselves. If you’re not seriously dealing with one, the other, or both, then you’re not really writing noir."

About the Author

JERRY THOMPSON is a bookseller, poet, playwright, and musician. His work has appeared in ZYZZYVA and the James White Review. He is the coauthor of Images of America: Black Artists in Oakland. His fiction and prose have appeared in various anthologies including Voices Rising, edited by G. Winston James, and Freedom in this Village: Twenty-Five Years of Black Gay Men’s Writing, edited by E. Lynn Harris. He is the coeditor of Oakland Noir and Berkeley Noir.

EDDIE MULLER, a.k.a. the “Czar of Noir,” has been nominated for several Edgar and Anthony awards, and his novel The Distance won a Shamus Award. He produces the San Francisco Noir City Film Festival, the largest annual film noir retrospective in the world, and is a frequent host on Turner Classic Movies. He is the coeditor of Oakland Noir.