Megan Abbott

Megan Abbott (born August 21, 1971) is an American author of crime fiction and of non-fiction analyses of hardboiled crime fiction. Her novels and short stories have drawn from and re-worked classic subgenres of crime writing from a female perspective. She is also an American writer and producer of television.

Biography
Growing up, Abbott was greatly intrigued by the 1930 and 1940s movies she saw at a movie theater in Grosse Pointe. She believes that watching these films as a child gave her her lifelong interest in crime fiction. Abbott graduated from the University of Michigan. She received her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University, and has taught at NYU, the State University of New York and New School University. In 2013 and 2014, she served as the John Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi.

In 2002, Abbott published her first book, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir, which The Paris Review described as "a prescient work of critical theory." In it, Abbott challenges the archetypes of the "tough guy" and "femme fatale" common to noir literature.

Three years later, Abbott published Die a Little, the first of several novels presenting woman-centered takes on traditional noir tropes. Set in midcentury Los Angeles, the story centered on Lora King, a schoolteacher whose brother Bill falls in love with Alice Steele, a former costumer for the film industry. Suspicious of Alice's motives and jealous of her hold over Bill, Lora sets out to investigate Alice's background, only to find herself pulled into the dark side of Hollywood. Kirkus Reviews reviewed the book favorably.

In addition to literature, Abbott has written for major journals and newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times. She also writes a blog with novelist Sara Gran.

Abbott was a screenwriter for The Deuce, an HBO show that premiered in 2017 and deals with pornography and the Mafia in New York in the 1970s and beyond. In 2019, she adapted her bestselling novel Dare Me into a TV series on USA Network. She served as co-showrunner on the series, along with Gina Fattore.

Influences
Abbott was influenced by film noir, classic noir fiction, and Jeffrey Eugenides's novel The Virgin Suicides. Two of her novels make reference to notorious crimes. The Song Is You (2007) is based around the disappearance of Jean Spangler in 1949, and Bury Me Deep (2009) on the 1931 case of Winnie Ruth Judd, dubbed "the Trunk Murderess".

Reception and awards
Abbott has won the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for outstanding fiction. Time named her one of the "23 Authors That We Admire" in 2011. Publishers Weekly gave her 2011 novel The End of Everything a starred review.

As editor

 * A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir (2007). ISBN 978-0979270994

Non-fiction

 * The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir (2002). ISBN 0-312-29481-6

Novels

 * Die a Little (2005). ISBN 978-0743261708
 * The Song Is You (2007). ISBN 978-0743291712
 * Queenpin (2007). ISBN 978-1416534280
 * Bury Me Deep (2009). ISBN 978-1416599098
 * The End of Everything (2011). ISBN 978-0316097796
 * Dare Me (2012). ISBN 978-0316097772
 * The Fever (2014). ISBN 978-0316231053
 * You Will Know Me (2016) ISBN 978-0316231077
 * Give Me Your Hand (2018). ISBN 978-1509855681
 * The Turnout (Summer 2021) ISBN 978-0593084908
 * Beware the Woman (2023). ISBN 9780593084939

Short stories

 * "Oxford Girl" (2016). Appeared in Mississippi Noir.
 * "Girlie Show" (2016). Appeared in In Sunlight or in Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper.
 * "Little Men" (2015). Appeared in The Best American Mystery Stories 2016.
 * "My Heart Is Either Broken" (2013). Appeared in Dangerous Women.