Penny Mickelbury


Penny Mickelbury 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. After leaving journalism, she taught fiction and script writing in Los Angeles and saw two of her plays 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
  • Waiting for Gabriel
  • Warm Robes of Remembrance
  • ''Hush Now''

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
  • Two Wings To Hide My Face, Bywater Books, 2025

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:

Awards and recognition

Literary awards

Recognition