Working collectively, the audience will build a mystery with three local crime writers.

We'll decide the WHO WHAT WHERE WHEN WHY & HOW together!

With Barbara Ross, Kate Flora, and Richard Cass.

Barbara Ross is the author of twelve mystery novels and six novellas in the Maine Clambake series, all published by Kensington. Her books have been nominated for multiple Agatha Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and have won the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. You can visit her website at www.maineclambakemysteries.com

She has also written the Jane Darrowfield Mysteries. Barbara’s first mystery novel, The Death of an Ambitious Woman, was published in 2010. In her former life, Barbara was a co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of successful start-ups in educational technology. She and her husband live in Portland, Maine.

Kate Flora’s fascination with people’s criminal tendencies began in the Maine attorney general’s office. Deadbeat dads, people who hurt their kids, and employers’ discrimination aroused her curiosity about human behavior. The author of twenty-six books spanning many genres including crime fiction, true crime, memoir, and nonfiction, and many short stories, Flora’s been a finalist for the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Derringer awards. She won the Public Safety Writers Association award for nonfiction and twice won the Maine Literary Award for crime fiction. She received a lifetime achievement award from the New England Crime Bake for her contributions to the community and will receive the Lea Wait Award for contributions to the crime writing community at the Maine Crime Wave this June.

Flora has taught writing for the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, Brown University Continuing Education, The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, the Cape Cod Writer’s Conference, and for Grub Street in Boston. She’s a former international president of Sisters in Crime, current president of the local chapter, and a founder of the New England Crime Bake and the Maine Crime Wave conferences. She blogs with the Maine Crime Writers.

Flora’s latest books include the stand-alone domestic suspense Teach Her a Lesson, and Such a Good Man, the 8th Joe Burgess police procedural. She divides her time between Massachusetts and Maine, where she gardens and cooks and watches the clouds when she’s not imagining her character’s dark deeds. www.kateclarkflora.com

Richard Cass is the author of the Elder Darrow jazz mystery series. The first book in the series won the 2018 Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. The fifth, Sweetie Bogan’s Sorrow, won the Nancy Pearl Librarians’ Prize for Genre Fiction. The seventh book in the series Closing Time, will be published in October, 2024. Dick has also published a thriller called The Last Altruist and a book of short stories entitled Gleam of Bone.

He holds a graduate degree in writing from the University of New Hampshire, where he studied with Thomas Williams, Jr. and Joseph Monninger. He's also studied with Ernest Hebert, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Molly Gloss. His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Playboy, Gray’s Sporting Journal, ZZYZVA, Tough, Shotgun Honey and Best Short Stories of the American West. He lives in Cape Elizabeth, Maine with his wife Anne.