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The Authors at Courmayeur |
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| 18/11/2008 |
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Sharon J. Bolton was born and raised in Lancashire. Trained as an actress, musician and dancer, she performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She spent her early career in marketing and PR before obtaining an MBA at Warwick University, where she met her husband Andrew. She later moved to London for work but currently lives with Andrew and their son in a village in Chiltern Hills, not far from Oxford.
Patrick Fogli, (Bologna, 1971) is a computer engineer and one of Italy’s most interesting young noir writers. He made his debut with Lentamente prima di morire, and followed that up with L’ultima estate d’innocenza. His melancholic stories are set in Bologna and feature characters looking to find themselves.
Victor Gischler is without a doubt the new American talent of hardboiled literature. A PhD in English Literature at Southern Mississippi University, he went on to teach creative writing at Rogers State University in Oklahoma. He later moved to Baton Rouge (Louisiana), where he continued to work in academia and began writing. His debut novel Gun Monkeys won him the prestigious Edgar Award Award for Best Debut Novel.
Francisco Gonzalez Ledesma is considered to be the father of Spanish, socially engaged noir. Born in the 1920s to a working-class family, his book Tiempo de venganza, published when he was 21, won the International Award for the Novel, by a jury comprising, among others, Somerset Maugham and Walter Starkie. During the Franco dictatorship, he was censored as a “red and pornographic” writer and published some 500 novels under a pseudonym. He has won numerous awards and was editor-in-chief of La Vanguardia. His police officer Mendèz is the culmination of the policemen he met while working as a journalist and despite their differences resembles another cop, Pepe Carvalho, created by the late Vasquez Montalban, with whom Ledesma fought over the years against the dictatorship.
The fame of Delacorta, the pseudonym of Swiss writer Daniel Odier, is very much tied to his six novels on Gorodisch and Alba, published from 1979-86. The first, Nanà, became a cult hit and reinvented French noir. The second episode, Diva, became a renowned film by Jean Jacques Beineix. Delacorta’s influence has left an indelible trace in cinema, above all in Luc Bessons’ two masterpieces, Nikita and The Professional.
A renowned television journalist, Liza Marklund (Piteå, 1962) divides her time between her native Sweden and Spain and internationally is considered the top female crime writer. She has won numerous awards and much recognition for her work in organizing and defending abused women. Marklund also co-owns Sweden’s third largest publishing house and serves as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. Since her literary debut in 1995, she has written 10 novels and a collection of essays. Her crime novels featuring Annika Bengtzon immediately became international bestsellers, selling nine million copies in 30 languages. She has written extensively as a journalist and today makes mostly television documentaries, hosts talk shows and writes on press topics such as child victims of AIDS in Cambodia and Russia and domestic violence, on which she made the documentary Take a Little Beating, which won a Best Documentary award from Swedish television.
Richard Price (58) published his first book, The Wanderers, set in the Bronx, when he was just 24 and just barely out of Cornell – from which he emerged, he has said, even streetier and more Bronx-sounding than when he began – and the MFA at Columbia, where his models were Hubert Selby and Lenny Bruce. He has published steadily every since, eventually turning from more or less autobiographical work to books like Clockers and Freedomland, big, Dickensian novels about the drug trade and life in the projects. He has also written the screenplays for Clockers and Mad Dog and Glory, among other movies, and recently he has written some episodes for the HBO series The Wire, which won him the Edgar. He is one of a handful of contemporary novelists to work for Hollywood and emerge more or less unscathed. He has also been nominated for an Academy Award received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award. He recently wrote the American remake of Olivier Marchal’s 36 Quais des Orfèvre (presented at Courmayeur in 2004), to be directed by Martin Campbell as 36, as well as the adaptation of Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44, to be directed by Ridley Scott.
Screenplays
36 (Martin Campbell, pre-production, 2009), Child 44 (Ridley Scott, pre-prod.), Freedomland (Joe Roth, 2006), Shaft (John Singleton, 2000), Ransom (Ron Howard, 1996) and Clockers (Spike Lee, 1995). Screenplays and novels: Kiss of Death (Barbet Schroeder, 1995); Mad Dog & Glory (John McNaughton 1993) and Night and the City (Irwin Winkler, 1992), both starring Robert De Niro; Sea of Love (Harold Becker, 1989); New York Stories (ep. “Life Lessons” by Martin Scorsese, 1989); Arena Brains (Robert Longo, 1988, short); Bad (Michael Jackson video, Martin Scorsese, 1987); Streets of Gold (Joe Roth, 1986); The Color of Money (Martin Scorsese 1986).
Marcus Sakey (Flint, Michigan) lives with his wife in Chicago. He began writing his first novel while still studying at Columbia University, during which time the mystery writer J. A. Konrath convinced him to leave college and dedicate himself to writing. The Blade Itself, his debut novel, was included in Esquire magazine’s five best books of 2007, and won the Strand Magazine Critics Award for Best Mystery Debut. Sakey has published two more novels, At the City’s Edge and Good People. The rights to the latter have been bought by actor Tobey Maguire.
Tom Rob Smith (London, 1979) graduated from Cambridge and for many years wrote for television programs such as Doctors and Dream Team. Winner of this year’s Ian Fleming Steel Dagger from the Crime Writers Association, Child 44 is his debut novel, written while he was working on the first Cambodian soap opera produced by the BBC. The film Child 44, which Ridley Scott will direct, is written by Richard Price, also a guests at Courmayeur this year. Smith recently wrote a film adaptation of the short story “Somewhere the Shadow” by Jeff Noon for the producers of The Duchess.
Don Winslow is one of those American writers who seem to use elements of his own life to fill the adventures of his characters. He was born in 1953 and before becoming a writer worked a private investigator, safari guide and journalist and has a passion for surfing, opera and cinematic writing. He lives in San Diego and has published over ten novels in the US yet is a recent “discovery” in Italy. The Winter of Frankie Machine is currently being made into a film by Michael Mann and stars Robert De Niro.
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