David L. Goodis Award - George Pelecanos
George P. Pelecanos is an American author. Many of his 20 books are in the genre of detective fiction and set primarily in his hometown of Washington, D.C. He is also a film and television producer and a television writer. On television, he frequently collaborates with David Simon, writing multiple episodes of Simon’s HBO series The Wire and Treme, and is also the co-creator (with Simon) of the HBO series The Deuce and We Own This City.
Pelecanos acknowledged that Elmore Leonard was a prime influence on him as an author. In addition to Leonard, he cited the works of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, John D. MacDonald, Ross Macdonald, Mickey Spillane, and John le Carré for getting him hooked on crime fiction.
Pelecanos’s early novels were written in the first person voice of Nick Stefanos, a Greek D.C. resident and sometime private investigator.
Jay & Deen Kogan Award: Johnny Temple
Temple won the 2013 Ellery Queen Award; the American Association of Publishers’ 2005 Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing; and the 2010 Jay and Deen Kogan Award for Excellence in Noir Literature. He has contributed articles and political essays to various publications, including the Nation, Publishers Weekly, AlterNet, Poets & Writers, and BookForum. He is also the chair of the Brooklyn Literary Council, which works with Brooklyn’s borough president to plan the annual Brooklyn Book Festival in September. He is the editor of USA Noir.