Texas enters the Akashic Noir Series arena with a dazzling array of terrifying, well-crafted short fiction.

Bobby Byrd: Bobby Byrd-publisher, poet and essayist-is the copublisher of Cinco Puntos Press in El Paso, TX. In 2005, for their work as publishers and for their involvement in the cultural communities of Mexico and the American Southwest, he and his wife Lee Merrill Byrd received the Lannan Fellowship for Cultural Freedom. As a poet Byrd is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship, the D.H. Lawrence Fellowship awarded by the University of New Mexico, and an International Residency Fellowship (NEA/Instituto de Belles Artes de México). His most recent book of poems, White Panties, Dead Friends and Other Bits and Pieces of Love, received the Southwest Book Award (2008). He is also the coeditor, with his son John William Byrd, of the border nonfiction anthology Puro Border: Dispatches, Snapshots, & Graffiti from La Frontera.

John William Byrd: John William Byrd is copublisher of Cinco Puntos Press in El Paso, TX. He is coeditor of the border nonfiction anthology Puro Border: Dispatches, Snapshots, & Graffiti from La Frontera (Cinco Puntos, 2002). As a Spanish-to-English translator, his credits include The Festival of the Bones/El Festival de las Calaveras: The Little Bitty Book for the Day of the Dead by Luis San Martin and the novel Out of Their Minds: The Incredible and (Sometimes) Sad Story of Ramon and Cornelio by Luis Humberto Crosthwaite. Byrd is also a freelance essayist, writing articles for online publications about culture and music.