Mark Coggins (born 1957) is the

Choctaw The Choctaw ( ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States, originally based in what is now Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choct ...

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 Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

, 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. It was founded in 1776 at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, ...

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

Choctaw Nation The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma (Choctaw: ''Chahta Okla'') is a Native American reservation occupying portions of southeastern Oklahoma in the United States. At roughly , it is the second-largest reservation in area after the Navajo, exceeding t ...

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

Tobias Wolff Tobias Jonathan Ansell Wolff (born June 19, 1945) is an American short story writer, memoirist, novelist, and teacher of creative writing. He is known for his memoirs, particularly '' This Boy's Life'' (1989) and '' In Pharaoh's Army'' (1994). H ...

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 Samuel Dashiell Hammett ( ; May 27, 1894 – January 10, 1961) was an American writer of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the characters he created are Sam Spade ('' The Ma ...

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 is 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 area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

for such companies as

Hewlett Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, Californi ...

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 o ...

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: People, figures, and characters * Deep Blue (musician), electronic and drum and bass musician * Deep Blue (DC Comics), a superhero in the post-Crisis DC Universe * Deep Blue (''Tokyo Mew Mew''), a character from ''Tokyo ...

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. It can typically be read in a sing ...

The Shamus Awards
thrillingdetective.com. and the Barry Award.Barry Awards
, deadlypleasures.com. '' Runoff'' 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 Eva Perón or by the nickname Evita (), was an Argentine politician, activist, actress, and philanthropist who served as First Lady of Argentina from June 1946 until ...

, and won the Gold Medal in the

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

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). * '' Runoff'' (2007). * '' The Big Wake-Up'' (2009). * '' No Hard Feelings'' (2015). * '' The Dead Beat Scroll'' (2019). * '' Geisha Confidential'' (2024).

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 M. H. de Young, Michael H. ...

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

KQED-FM KQED-FM (88.5 MHz) is a listener-supported, non-commercial public radio station in San Francisco, California. It is simulcast on KQEI-FM (89.3 MHz) in the Sacramento metropolitan area. The parent organization is KQED Inc., which also owns tw ...

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 Nation of Oklahoma people Living people Native American novelists Stanford University alumni Writers from California 20th-century Native American writers 21st-century Native American writers Choctaw male writers Choctaw writers