GREG HERREN has written and published over thirty novels and over fifty short stories, under his own name and various others. He has also edited over twenty anthologies. He has won two Lambda Literary Awards and an Anthony Award. He has an additional twelve Lambda nominations and another Anthony nomination, in addition to also have been nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award and a Macavity. He won two Moonbeam Children’s Book Award medals, a gold for Sleeping Angel and a silver for Lake Thirteen.
He has written two private eye series, the Chanse MacLeod series (seven books, beginning with Murder in the Rue Dauphine) and the Scotty Bradley adventures (eight books, beginning with Bourbon Street Blues; the most recent, Royal Street Reveillon, was released in September 2019). He has written several young adult novels, including Sorceress, Sleeping Angel, Sara, and Lake Thirteen, and several stand-alone suspense novels, including The Orion Mask.
He started out with a sports column for Lavender magazine in Minneapolis in 1996. After moving to New Orleans later that year, he began writing a syndicated fitness column, and also wrote about fitness and health for Genre, XY, and Instinct. He also became the book reviewer for IMPACT News in New Orleans, also doing author interviews, and began publishing reviews in OUT, A&U, Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, and Lambda Book Report. He also contributed articles to publications as varied as Where New Orleans, Gulf Coast Arts Review, and New Orleans magazines.
His first two short stories were published in August 2000, in Men magazine and the anthology Men for All Seasons. He would go on to publish stories in magazines from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine to Mystery Weekly to Mystery Tribune to the critically acclaimed anthologies New Orleans Noir, Blood on the Bayou, Murder-a-Go-Go’s, The Beat of Black Wings, and Florida Happens. His story “Survivor’s Guilt” was a Macavity finalist, and “Cold Beer No Flies” was an Anthony Award nominee.
In 2000 he went to work for Lambda Book Report as the assistant editor, taking over as editor in November that year, and stayed in that position for nearly a year. In 2002, along with his partner, Paul Willis, and award-winning mystery novelist J. M. Redmann, officially founded the Saints and Sinners LGBT Literary Festival in New Orleans.
He also began working as an editor for Bella Books in 2001, eventually leaving in 2003 to work for the Harrington Park Press. In 2006, he took over as senior editor of the press, and remained in that position until the business was sold in 2007 and the fiction and creative non-fiction lines were closed down. He started editing for Bold Strokes Books in 2009, gradually transitioning out of editorial work by 2015.
He served four years as chapter president of Mystery Writers of America’s Southwest chapter, and also served on the national board of directors. He has judged for the Lambda Literary Awards, the Hammett Prize, the Edgar Awards, and the Publishing Triangle awards. He currently writes a column on diversity in crime fiction for the Sisters in Crime quarterly newsletter. He served two years on the national board for Bouchercon, the mystery fans’ convention, and also worked on the host committee for the New Orleans Bouchercon. He was General Chair for the Edgar Awards for 2020, and is currently serving as Executive Vice President of Mystery Writers of America.
He went to work for the NO/AIDS Task Force in 2005, working as administrative assistant on a research project for two years before transitioning into a role as an HIV/safer sex counselor and tester.
Over the course of his life he was worked for a bank, an airline, numerous retail outlets, for a health club as business manager, and as a personal trainer/aerobics instructor.
He has lived in New Orleans since 1996, except for one year in Washington DC.
Queer and Loathing in America 