Prison Noir

A completely new, fresh, and frightening take on "prison literature."

“A sobering experience . . . The power of this collection comes from the voices of these authors, voices suffused with rage, despair, and madness.” —The New York Times Book Review This anthology, with stories set in different prisons across the US, presents an absolutely new perspective on prison literature. From a killer’s confession to a desire for redemption, from stories of new cell mates to prison snitches, this collection of tales runs the gamut of emotions, settings, and voices. Readers are drawn into an unknown world and left with feelings of horror, compassion, and even understanding. Edited by renowned author Joyce Carol Oates, who has led various writing workshops in correctional institutions across America, Prison Noir features stories by Christopher M. Stephen, Sin Soracco, Scott Gutches, Eric Boyd, Ali F. Sareini, Stephen Geez, B.M. Dolarman, Zeke Caligiuri, Marco Verdoni, Kenneth R. Brydon, Linda Michelle Marquardt, Andre White, Timothy Pauley, Bryan K. Palmer, and William Van Poyck. “These are stories that resonate with authenticity and verve and pain and truth. Any collection edited by the National Book Award–winning author Oates deserves attention, but the contributors are deft and confident, and great writers without her imprimatur . . . Authentic, powerful, visceral, moving, great writing.” —Library Journal “All the stories, set within jailhouse walls, explore anguish, lunacy, and sometimes, a desire for redemption. Others offer an unsettling and unvarnished look at life in the clink . . . Perhaps most importantly, the book gives inmates a voice: their own.” —Fine Books & Collections

More than 700 films from the classic period of film noir (1940 to 1959) are presented in this exhaustive reference book—such films as The Accused, Among the Living, The Asphalt Jungle, Baby Face Nelson, Bait, The Beat Generation, Crossfire, Dark Passage, I Walk Alone, The Las Vegas Story, The Naked City, Strangers on a Train, White Heat, and The Window. For each film, the following information is provided: the title, release date, main performers, screenwriter(s), director(s), type of noir, thematic content, a rating based on the five-star system, and a plot synopsis that does not reveal the ending.

This filmography covers Columbia Pictures' noir titles released in the classic noir era, October 1940 to June 1962. All sub-genres are covered including British, western and science fiction. Included are the great Columbia films Gilda, Lady from Shanghai, All the Kings Men, In a Lonely Place, On the Waterfront, Anatomy of a Murder and Experiment in Terror. The films are examined in detail, with release dates, cast and production credits, production dates, synopses, reviews, notes and commentary on each film, the author's summation and the publicity "tag lines."

The Historical Dictionary of Film Noir is a comprehensive guide that ranges from 1940 to present day neo-noir. It consists of a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, a filmography, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on every aspect of film noir and neo-noir, including key films, personnel (actors, cinematographers, composers, directors, producers, set designers, and writers), themes, issues, influences, visual style, cycles of films (e.g. amnesiac noirs), the representation of the city and gender, other forms (comics/graphic novels, television, and videogames), and noir's presence in world cinema. It is an essential reference work for all those interested in this important cultural phenomenon.

Prison Writing and the Literary World tackles international prison writing and writing about imprisonment in relation to questions of literary representation and formal aesthetics, the “value” or “values” of literature, textual censorship and circulation, institutional networks and literary-critical methodologies. It offers scholarly essays exploring prison writing in relation to wartime internment, political imprisonment, resistance and independence creation, regimes of terror, and personal narratives of development and awakening that grapple with race, class and gender. Cutting across geospatial divides while drawing on nation- and region-specific expertise, it asks readers to connect the questions, examples and challenges arising from prison writing and writing about imprisonment within the UK and the USA, but also across continental Europe, Stalinist Russia, the Americas, Africa and the Middle East. It also includes critical reflection pieces from authors, editors, educators and theatre practitioners with experience of the fraught, testing and potentially inspiring links between prison and the literary world.

The laconic private eye...the corrupt cop...the heist that goes wrong...the Femme Fatale with the rich husband and dim lover - all are trademark characters of the movement known as film noir, that elusive mixture of stark lighting and even starker emotions. Noir explores the dark side of post-war society - gangsters, hoodlums, prostitutes and killers - and showed how it corrupted the good and the beautiful. Many of these films are now touchstones of what we regard as 'classic' Hollywood - The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Big Sleep (1946), Double Indemnity (1944) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). The Pocket Essential Film Noir charts the progression of the noir style as a vehicle for film-makers who wanted to record the darkness at the heart of American society as it emerged from World War to the Cold War.

Crime fiction set in Iran—including a finalist for the Shamus Award for Best PI Short Story. “Tehran Noir is not only a solid crime collection, but an illuminating look into day-to-day life in the Middle East, with religious and political implications galore, as well as racial tensions bubbling just beneath the surface. . . . The stories in Tehran Noir aren’t always easy to read, but they are engaging in the extreme.” —San Francisco Book Review Includes brand-new stories by Gina B. Nahai, Salar Abdoh, Lily Farhadpour, Azardokht Bahrami, Yourik Karim-Masihi, Vali Khalili, Farhaad Heidari Gooran, Aida Moradi Ahani, Mahsa Mohebali, Majed Neisi, Danial Haghighi, Javad Afhami, Sima Saeedi, Mahak Taheri, and Hossein Abkenar. “A stellar and diverse cast of Iranian writers. . . . A collection such as this is able to bring Iran to life for the foreign reader in a way other fiction and non-fiction cannot. . . . Superb.” —PopMatters