Mysteries of Identity

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With JOHN COPENHAVER, VALERIE NIEMAN, and NICOLE ZELNIKER. These three novels skirt the edges of the mystery genre while taking on various considerations of identity. Gender expectations, LGBTQ concerns, and coming-of-age self-awareness all complicate the usual terrain of the mystery field. Hosted by JACOB PAUL. 

JOHN COPENHAVER‘s historical crime novel, Dodging and Burning (Pegasus), won the 2019 Macavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel and garnered Anthony, Strand Critics, Barry, and Lambda Literary Award nominations. Copenhaver writes a crime fiction review column for Lambda Literary called “Blacklight,” cohosts on the House of Mystery Radio Show, and is the six-time recipient of Artist Fellowships from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He grew up in the mountains of southwestern Virginia and currently lives in Richmond, VA, with his husband, artist Jeffery Paul. The Savage Kind (Pegasus) is his second novel.

 VALERIE NEIMEN‘s new novel, In the Lonely Backwater, a YA/crossover suspense novel in the Southern gothic tradition, will be published by Regal House/Fitzroy Books in May 2022. To the Bones, her genre-bending folk horror/thriller about coal country, was a finalist for the 2020 Manly Wade Wellman Award, joining three earlier novels, a short fiction collection, and three poetry collections. She has published widely in journals, and has held state and NEA creative writing fellowships. A native of western New York, Nieman was a journalist and farmer in West Virginia. She holds degrees from West Virginia University and Queens University of Charlotte and recently retired as a creative writing professor at NC A&T State University.

NICOLE ZELNIKER (she/her) is a writer, activist, and managing editor at The Nasiona. She is the author of several books, including “Letters I’ll Never Send” and “Until We Fall.”

JACOB PAUL  is the author of two previous novels, A Song of Ilan (Jaded Ibis, 2015) and Sarah/Sara (Ig, 2010), which Poets & Writers named one of 2010’s five best first fictions. His collaborations have led to the fine art books, Home for an Hour (Otherwise, 2014) and Feed Mayonnaise to Tuna (Otherwise, 2016). His work has also appeared or is forthcoming in Hunger Mountain, Western Humanities Review, Green Mountains Review, Massachusetts Review, Seneca Review, Mountain Gazette and USA Today’s Weekend Magazine as well as on therumpus.net, fictionwritersreview.com and numerocinqmagazine.com. He teaches creative writing at High Point University in North Carolina.