ISSUE 12 AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

Thomas Andes​

Tom Andes’ writing has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2012, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and several dozen journals and other publications. He won the 2019 Gold Medal for Best Novel-in-Progress from the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society. His short stories have been finalists or placed in numerous contests and his book reviews have appeared widely. He is also a musician and has released two critically acclaimed EPs of original music.

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He received his BA in English from Loyola University New Orleans and an MFA in Fiction from San Francisco State University. He has held a variety of jobs, including installing fireplaces in the United Kingdom, working the front and the back of the house in the service industry, and teaching writing at San Francisco State University, the Academy of Art University, Northwest Arkansas Community College, the ADVANCE Camp for Young Scholars, and the New Orleans Writers Workshop, which he co-founded.

He currently makes a living as a freelance editor and writer while moonlighting as a country singer. He lives in Albuquerque with his wife and their two cats.

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Doug Bucshon​

Doug Bucshon is a writer and long-time sports journalist based in Central Illinois, where he covers college athletics. He has covered University of Illinois athletics for over 15 years following a career in the United States military. His fiction leans into Midwestern noir, drawing on the texture of post-industrial towns and the lives shaped by them. He is the author of Ten is the Point and is at work on a collection of stories inspired by the Illinois coal mining town where he grew up. 

Mark Coggins​

Mark Coggins is the Choctaw and American author of the August Riordan series. His books have been nominated for the Shamus and the Barry crime fiction awards and have been selected for best of the year lists compiled by the San Francisco Chronicle, the Detroit Free Press and Amazon.com, among others. He has published other short fiction in Eclectica Magazine, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, The New Black Mask and a number of anthologies.

Christina Hoag​

Christina Hoag’s short noir fiction has appeared in Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2025, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Mystery Tribune, Black Cat Weekly, Shotgun Honey, Guilty Crime Story, All Due Respect, Dark Yonder, Saturday Evening Post, and various anthologies. Her literary short stories have been longlisted twice for The Commonwealth Foundation’s Short Story Prize. She is the author of noir novels Girl on the Brink, Skin of Tattoos, and Law of the Jungle. A former journalist and Latin America correspondent, she lives in Los Angeles.

Nick Kolakowski​

Nick Kolakowski is the author of several crime novels, including “Boise Longpig Hunting Club” and “Where the Bones Lie.” His work has been nominated for the Anthony and Derringer awards, and his short story “Scorpions,” which first appeared in Dark Yonder, was included in The Best Mystery and Suspense 2024. He lives and writes in New York City.

Veronica Leigh​

Veronica Leigh has been published in numerous blogs, anthologies, journals, and magazines. She aspires to be the Jane Austen of her generation and she makes her home in Indiana. “The Keeper of Lost Daughters” is her first novel. Her website is: veronicaleighauthor.wordpress.com.

Hugh Lessig​

Hugh Lessig’s debut novel, Fadeaway Joe, was released in 2023 by Crooked Lane Books. His short fiction has appeared in Thuglit, Needle, Crime Factory, Black Cat Weekly, and Shotgun Honey, as well as numerous anthologies.​ Most recently, he contributed to the Anthony Award-nominated anthology “Scattered, Smothered, Covered and Chunked: Crime Fiction Inspired by Waffle House,” and “In Too Deep,” crime stories based on songs by Genesis. He is a past Derringer Award finalist. His two novellas are part of the Guns + Tacos and Chop Shop series published by the former Down & Out Books.

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Lessig spent 35 years as a newspaper reporter in Pennsylvania and Virginia. He was embedded with the U.S. Navy to cover the humanitarian response to the Haiti earthquake and spent two weeks in pre-war Ukraine as part of a journalist exchange program. He won multiple awards for his news writing.​ Man of the House marks his first appearance in Dark Yonder. The story grew from a family tragedy. In 1926, Lessig’s grandfather was killed in a head-on collision of two trains in New Jersey. He was the engineer, returning home to Pennsylvania after a long day. The other two members of the crew survived. He left behind his wife, who was pregnant with their ninth child. The Lessig children fanned out, took jobs and sent money home to their mother. Their letters home tell of hard work and family duty. 

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Lessig is now semi-retired and lives in the Tidewater area of Virginia with his loving partner, Shana, and their three dogs: Gus, Daisy and Mia. Thanks to a Facebook group, he has found photos of the train that represented his grandfather’s last ride. To this day, has never come across photos of the man himself.

Steve Liskow​

Steve Liskow (www.steveliskow.com) lives in central Connecticut with his wife Barbara and a series of rescued cats and occasionally plays guitar at local open mics. A former English teacher and a theatrical actor, director, designer, technician, and producer, he has published 16 novels and over 70 short stories in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Tough, Mystery Magazine, and several anthologies. He was the first two-time winner of the Black Orchid Novella Award, and contributed to the Derringer-winning anthology Murder, Neat and the Anthony-winning anthology Crime Hits Home, edited by SJ Rozan. He has also been a finalist for the Edgar Award, the Shamus Award, and the Al Blanchard Story Award. He has appeared as a panelist and served as a mentor for both Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime and conducts writing workshops at various local libraries to satisfy his teaching jones.

K.T. Nguyen​

K.T. Nguyen is a former editor at Glamour magazine. Her psychological thriller YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID received the Agatha Award and the Anthony Award for Best First Novel. When she’s not writing, you’ll find K.T. practicing Krav Maga, watching the Mets, or playing with her terrier Alice. A graduate of Brown University, K.T. lives just outside Washington, D.C. K.T. is a proud member of Crime Writers of Color, Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers.

Grant Tracey​

Grant Tracey has been Fiction Editor at the North American Review for over twenty-five years. From 1992 until 2015 he published four story collections and nearly fifty literary stories in small magazines. In 2015, with the Hayden Fuller Mysteries, he switched to writing lyrical crime noir. He has a brand new Eddie Sands story in Black Cat Weekly and his fourth Fuller novel, A Shoeshine Kill (Twelve Winters Press), was released last fall. From 1984–85, Grant drove a cab in Peterborough, Ontario, one of many inspirations for the fictional Winsome. Sadly, he’s an avid Toronto Maple Leafs fan. Favorite writers: Raymond Chandler and Jim Thompson.

Tom Andes’ writing has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2012, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and several dozen journals and other publications. He won the 2019 Gold Medal for Best Novel-in-Progress from the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society. His short stories have been finalists or placed in numerous contests and his book reviews have appeared widely. He is also a musician and has released two critically acclaimed EPs of original music.

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He received his BA in English from Loyola University New Orleans and an MFA in Fiction from San Francisco State University. He has held a variety of jobs, including installing fireplaces in the United Kingdom, working the front and the back of the house in the service industry, and teaching writing at San Francisco State University, the Academy of Art University, Northwest Arkansas Community College, the ADVANCE Camp for Young Scholars, and the New Orleans Writers Workshop, which he co-founded.​ He currently makes a living as a freelance editor and writer while moonlighting as a country singer. He lives in Albuquerque with his wife and their two cats.

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