Penny Mickelbury

Penny Mickelbury
Penny Mickelbury
	Mickelbury in 2017
Born	May 31, 1948 (age 76); Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
Occupation	Novelist; playwright; teacher; journalist;
Genre	Fiction, crime fiction, mystery, historical fiction, stageplays
Website
	www/pennymickelbury.com

Penny Mickelbury (born May 31, 1948) is an African-American playwright, short story writer, mystery series writer, and historical novelist who worked as a print and television journalist for ten years before concentrating on fiction writing.^[1] After leaving journalism, she taught fiction and script writing in Los Angeles and saw two of her plays (Waiting for Gabriel and Hush Now) produced there. She began writing detective novels with Keeping Secrets, published by Naiad Press in 1994, in the first of a series featuring Gianna Maglione, a lesbian chief of a hate-crimes unit based in Washington, D.C., and her lover 'Mimi Patterson', a journalist. Her second series of four books features Carole Ann Gibson, a Washington, D.C., attorney, who is widowed in the first book and subsequently runs an investigation agency with Jake Graham, the detective who investigated her husband's death. Her third series features Phil Rodriguez, a Puerto Rican private investigator on the Lower Easter Side of New York City. Mickelbury has also written short story collections and historical novels highlighting the Black experience in America.

Selected plays

Time Out (produced 1989)
Waiting for Gabriel (produced 1991, re-staged 2000)
Warm Robes of Remembrance (1993)
Hush Now (produced 2000)

Novels, short stories, and anthologies

Gianna Maglione novels

Keeping Secrets: A Gianna Maglione Mystery, Naiad Press, 1994
Nights Songs: A Gianna Maglione Mystery, Naiad Press, 1995
Love Notes, Naiad Press, 2002
Darkness Descending, 2005
Death's Echoes, Bywater Books, 2018
You Can't Die But Once, Bywater Books, 2020

Carole Ann Gibson novels

One Must Wait, Simon & Schuster, 1998
Where to Choose, Simon & Schuster, 1999
The Step Between, Simon & Schuster, 2000
Paradise Interrupted, Simon & Schuster, 2001

Phil Rodriguez novels

Two Graves Dug, Five Star Press, 2005
A Murder Too Close, Five Star Press, 2008

Historical novels

Belle City, Whitepoint Press, 2014
Two Wings To Fly Away, Bywater Books, 2019

Short story collections

That Part of My Face: Short Stories, 2016
God's Will and Other Lies: Stories, BLF Press, 2019

Anthologies

Stories included in:

The Mysterious Naiad, ed. Grier and Forrest, Naiad, 1994
Spooks, Spies and Private Eyes: Black Mystery, Crime and Suspense Fiction, ed. Paula L. Woods, Doubleday, 1995
Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African-American Authors, ed. Eleanor Taylor Bland, Berkley Prime Crime Press, 2004
Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail, ed. Gary Phillips and Andrea Gibbons, PM Press, 2011

Awards and recognition

Literary awards

1995 Lambda Literary Award Finalist, Night Songs, Naiad
2001 Golden Pen Award, National Black Writer's Alliance, for Paradise Interrupted
2005 Lambda Literary Award Finalist, Darkness Descending, Kings Crossing
2019 Golden Crown Literary Award Finalist, Death's Echoes, Bywater Books
2019 Independent Book Publisher Award, Bronze winner, Death’s Echoes, Bywater Books
2020 Golden Crown Literary Award Finalist, Two Wings to Fly Away, Bywater Books
2020 Alice B Readers Award for career achievement

Recognition

1998 Residency at the Hedgebrook Women Writers Retreat
2001 Prix du Roman d'Adventures from Les Éditions du Masque for the Carole Ann Gibson mystery series
2003 Audre Lorde Estate Grant
2017 Special Keynote Speaker at the Golden Crown Literary Society conference^[2]
2019 Inducted with the Washington Post Metro Seven into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame

References

External links

[1] Jeanne Lesinski ‘Penny Mickelbury’ Answers.com

[2] "2017 CONFERENCE SPEAKERS".

[1]

[2]

Penny Mickelbury
Mickelbury in 2017
Born	(1948-05-31) May 31, 1948 (age 76) Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
Occupation	Novelist playwright teacher journalist
Genre	Fiction, crime fiction, mystery, historical fiction, stageplays
Website
www/pennymickelbury.com