Gary Phillips

Raised deep amid the concrete and weathered palm trees of South Central L.A., in the neighborhood not far from where music great Sam Cooke was gunned down at a hot sheet motel, Gary Phillips draws on his experiences ranging from community organizer, printer, teaching incarcerated youth, running a nonprofit begun after the ’92 riots, state director of a political action committee to delivering dog cages in writing his tales of chicanery and malfeasance. He writes hard-bitten prose, radio scripts, comic books and screenplays. Phillips has produced the Ivan Monk and Martha Chainey series, along with numerous short stories, and stand alone novels such as Warlord of Willow Ridge. The novel was judged by KCET’s Departures as one of the best books of 2012.