Penny Mickelbury

Penny Mickelbury (born 1948) is an African-American playwright and mystery novelist who worked as a print and television journalist for ten years before concentrating on fiction writing. After leaving journalism, she taught fiction and script writing in Los Angeles and saw two of her plays (‘’Waiting for Gabriel’’ and ‘’Hush Now’’) produced there. She began writing detective novels with Keeping Secrets, published by Naiad Press in 1994, the first of a series featuring 'Gianna Maglione’, a lesbian chief of a hate-crimes unit based in Washington D.C. and her lover 'Mimi Patterson', a journalist. Her second series features ‘Carol Ann Gibson’, a Washington D.C attorney who is widowed in the first book and subsequently runs an investigation agency with 'Jake Graham', the detective who investigated her husband’s death. Her third features 'Phil Rodriguez', a Puerto Rican private investigator on the Lower Easter Side of New York City.

Selected plays

• Time Out (produced 1989)
• Waiting for Gabriel (produced 1991, re-staged 2000)
• Warm Robes of Remembrance (1993)
• Hush Now (produced 2000)

Novels

Gianna Maglione novels

• Keeping Secrets: a Gianna Maglione Mystery, Naiad Press, 1994
• Nights Songs: a Gianna Maglione Mystery, Naiad Press, 1995
• Love Notes, 2002
• Darkness Descending, 2005

Carol Ann Gibson novels

• One Must Wait, Simon & Schuster, 1998
• Where to Choose, Simon & Schuster, 1999
• The Step Between, Simon & Schuster, 2000
• Paradise Interrupted, Simon & Schuster, 2001

Phil Rodriguez novels

• Two Graves Dug, 2005
• A Murder Too Close, 2008

Anthologies

Included in:

• Naiad Press collection, 1994
• Spooks, Spies and Private Eyes: Black Mystery and Suspense Fiction, ed. Paula L. Woods, 1995.
• Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African American Authors, ed. Eleanor Taylor Bland, Berkley Prime Crime Press, 2004