It’s a wrap for NoirCon 8!
This was our biggest NoirCon yet and we are very grateful to our conference partners and their staff: Palm Springs Cultural Center and the The Best Bookstore in Palm Springs; our Speakers, Panelists and Book Contributors; our Volunteers (Amy, Bess, Brian, Esme, Gina, Jan, Jody, Jonny, Lisa, Mike, Monika, Sally, Scott, Sherry, and Stephen); and all our Attendees for helping make the 2024 Conference a wonderful success! Join our Mailing List below and check back here for updates about all things NoirCon.
Jim Nisbet, Honoree
The 2024 Jay and Deen Kogan Award for Excellence
NoirCon 2024 was dedicated to the Life and Incomparable Talent of author, poet, and high precision carpenter extraordinaire Jim Nisbet.
The Jay and Deen Kogan Award for Excellence is given at NoirCon to that individual whose work reflects the preservation of literary excellence and achievement. Recipients have devoted a lifetime to cultivating a greater appreciation and pride in America’s literary heritage by writing, and/or publishing the most authoritative editions of America’s best and most significant writing within the genre of noir.
from PM Press:
“San Francisco writer Jim Nisbet has published eleven novels, including the acclaimed Lethal Injection. He has also published five volumes of poetry. His novel, Dark Companion, was shorted-listed for the 2006 Hammett Prize. Various of his works have been translated into French, German, Japanese, Italian, Polish, Hungarian, Greek, Russian and Romanian. 2010 could be named “The Year of Jim Nisbet” as, in addition to the PM/Green Arcade publication of A Moment of Doubt, Jim has a new hardcover, Windward Passage (winner of the San Francisco Book Festival 2010 Award for Best Science Fiction) from Overlook Press, along with two reprints, kicking off Overlook’s reissue of Jim’s entire backlist, beginning with the long out of print Lethal Injection, and, to finish off an amazing four-novel year, The Damned Don’t Die.
Aside from reading and performing his own work for some forty-five years, Nisbet has written and seen produced a modest handful of one-act plays and monologues, including Valentine, Note from Earth, WonderEndz™ SmackVision™ and Alas, Poor Yorick, and himself directed the original productions of most of these works…
A Moment of Doubt has was nominated for the 30th Annual Northern California Book Awards.”
Sandro Veronese has described Nisbet as follows:
“His pedigree is pure. He made his debut in 1981 with the Berkeley-based Black Lizard, founded the year before by Barry Gifford with the aim of republishing the classic authors of American noir fiction, namely Jim Thompson, Charles Willeford, David Goodis, Harry Whittington, Charles Williams, Dan J. Marlowe, all of whom had already passed away, along with the books of only two living authors, Barry Gifford himself and, indeed, Nisbet.
Jim Nisbet has been the champion of unremunerative American authors. For this reason he was a hidden garden, a secret orchard.”
A Celebration of the Life and Work of Author Jim Nisbet, courtesy of The Green Arcade:
Past honorees of The Jay and Deen Kogan Award for Excellence have included:
2022: Marcia Muller (author) and Bill Pronzini (author)
2018: Geoffrey O’Brien (author, poet)
and Max Rudin (publisher, The Library of America)
2016: Charles Ardai (author; publisher, Hard Case Crime)
and Stona Fith (author; publisher, Concord Free Press)
2014: Bronwen Hruska (publisher, Soho Press)
2012: Otto Penzler (author; historian; publisher, The Mysterious Press)
2010: Johnny Temple (publisher and editor, Akashic Books)
2008: Dennis McMillan (publisher, Dennis McMillan Publications)
