Mark Coggins is the Choctaw and American author of a series of novels featuring private eye protagonist August Riordan. He is also a photographer.

Biography

Coggins was born in New Mexico in 1957 and attended

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...

, where he earned an undergraduate degree in International Relations, a masters in Computer Science and was elected to the

Phi Beta Kappa Society The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal ar ...

.Official Bio
markcoggins.com.Noir Guy
stanfordmag.org, January 2008. He is an enrolled member of the

Choctaw Nation The Choctaw Nation (Choctaw: ''Chahta Okla'') is a Native American territory covering about , occupying portions of southeastern Oklahoma in the United States. The Choctaw Nation is the third-largest federally recognized tribe in the United St ...

.Artist Registry
choctawnation.com. While at Stanford, Coggins took creative writing classes with

Tobias Wolff Tobias is the transliteration of the Greek which is a translation of the Hebrew biblical name he, טוֹבִיה, Toviyah, JahGod is good, label=none. With the biblical Book of Tobias being present in the Deuterocanon/Apocrypha of the Bible, T ...

and Ron Hansen and wrote the first short story featuring August Riordan in a class for Hansen. This was published in 1986 in ''The New Black Mask'', a revival of the famous Black Mask pulp magazine that launched the careers of Dashiell Hammett and

Raymond Chandler Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive durin ...

.Back to Black, Part IV
therapsheet.blogspot.com, November 27, 2007. Coggins has worked in the

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

for such companies as Hewlett Packard and

Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...

Actuate Names Mark Coggins as New Senior Vice President of Engineering
, actuate.com. and although Riordan as a character is something of a technophobe, Coggins' novels often explore high technology themes and Silicon Valley culture.How Greedy Was My Valley?
salon.com, September 18, 2002.

Career

Coggins' first book, '' The Immortal Game'', dealt with the theft of chess-playing software similar to that run on

Deep Blue Deep Blue may refer to: Film * ''Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads'', a 1992 documentary film about Mississippi Delta blues music * Deep Blue (2001 film), ''Deep Blue'' (2001 film), a film by Dwight H. Little * Deep Blue (2003 ...

and was nominated for the

Shamus Award The Shamus Award is awarded by the Private Eye Writers of America (PWA) for the best detective fiction ( P. I. = Private investigator) genre novels and short stories A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one s ...

The Shamus Awards
thrillingdetective.com. and the Barry Award.Barry Awards
, deadlypleasures.com. ''

Runoff Runoff, run-off or RUNOFF may refer to: * RUNOFF, the first computer text-formatting program * Runoff or run-off, another name for bleed, printing that lies beyond the edges to which a printed sheet is trimmed * Runoff or run-off, a stock marke ...

'' described a fictional mayoral election in San Francisco where the results were altered by individuals who hacked the city's electronic voting machines. '' The Big Wake-Up'' envisioned an altered version of the bizarre history of the peripatetic remains of Argentina's most famous first lady,

Eva Perón María Eva Duarte de Perón (; ; 7 May 1919 – 26 July 1952), better known as just Eva Perón or by the nickname Evita (), was an Argentine politician, activist, actress, and philanthropist who served as First Lady of Argentina from June 194 ...

, and won the Gold Medal in the

Independent Publisher Book Awards The Independent Publisher Book Awards, also styled the IPPY Awards, are a set of annual book awards for independently published titles. They are the longest-running unaffiliated contest open exclusively to independent presses. The IPPY Awards ar ...

in the Mystery/Suspense/Thriller category.The Story Behind the Story: The Big Wake-Up by Mark Coggins
therapsheet.blogspot.com, November 03, 2009.Announcing the Results of the 2010 Independent Publisher Book Awards
independentpublisher.com, May 25, 2010. '' Prom Night and Other Man-made Disasters'' was somewhat of a departure. A collection of humorous essays describing episodes in his life from school, career, and relationships, it features a number of anecdotes from his childhood in Phoenix, Arizona, including the title essay, "Prom Night," the improbable story of how shy and socially-awkward Coggins brought the homecoming queen of Central High School to the senior prom.Prom Night and Other Man-made Disasters by Mark Coggins
lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com, May 31, 2012.

Works

Novels

* '' The Immortal Game'' (1999). * '' Vulture Capital'' (2002). * '' Candy From Strangers'' (2006). * ''

'' (2007). * '' The Big Wake-Up'' (2009). * '' No Hard Feelings'' (2015). * '' The Dead Beat Scroll'' (2019).

Non-fiction

* '' Prom Night and Other Man-made Disasters'' (2012).

Photography Monographs

* '' Street Stories'' (2021).

External links

Official siteReview
of ''The Immortal Game'' in the

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The pa ...

Podcast
of the first chapter of ''Candy from Strangers'' from

KQED-FM KQED-FM (88.5 MHz) is a NPR-member radio station in San Francisco, California. Its parent organization is KQED Inc., which also owns its television partners, both of which are PBS member outlets: KQED (channel 9) and KQEH (channel 54). Stu ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Coggins, Mark 1957 births 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American novelists American male novelists American mystery writers Choctaw people Living people Native American novelists Stanford University alumni Writers from California 20th-century Native Americans 21st-century Native Americans