Penny Mickelbury (born May 31, 1948) is an African-American playwright, short story writer, mystery series writer, and historical novelist who worked as a print and television journalist for ten years before concentrating on fiction writing.[1] 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, in 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 of four books features Carole 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 series features Phil Rodriguez, a Puerto Rican private investigator on the Lower Easter Side of New York City. Mickelbury has also written short story collections and historical novels highlighting the Black experience in America.
Selected plays
Time Out (produced 1989)
Waiting for Gabriel (produced 1991, re-staged 2000)
Warm Robes of Remembrance (1993)
Hush Now (produced 2000)
Novels, short stories, and anthologies
Gianna Maglione novels
Keeping Secrets: A Gianna Maglione Mystery, Naiad Press, 1994
Nights Songs: A Gianna Maglione Mystery, Naiad Press, 1995
Love Notes, Naiad Press, 2002
Darkness Descending, 2005
Death's Echoes, Bywater Books, 2018
You Can't Die But Once, Bywater Books, 2020
Carole 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, Five Star Press, 2005
A Murder Too Close, Five Star Press, 2008
Historical novels
Belle City, Whitepoint Press, 2014
Two Wings To Fly Away, Bywater Books, 2019
Short story collections
That Part of My Face: Short Stories, 2016
God's Will and Other Lies: Stories, BLF Press, 2019
Anthologies
Stories included in:
The Mysterious Naiad, ed. Grier and Forrest, Naiad, 1994
Spooks, Spies and Private Eyes: Black Mystery, Crime and Suspense Fiction, ed. Paula L. Woods, Doubleday, 1995
Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African-American Authors, ed. Eleanor Taylor Bland, Berkley Prime Crime Press, 2004
Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail, ed. Gary Phillips and Andrea Gibbons, PM Press, 2011
