Tod Goldberg on Gangsters, Human-Made Seas, Short Fiction Tricks, and The Low Desert

Tod Goldberg is the New York Times bestselling author of over a dozen books, including The Low Desert, Gangsterland, a finalist for the Hammett Prize, Gangster Nation, The House of Secrets, which he co-authored with Brad Meltzer, and Living Dead Girl, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He is also the co-host of the wildly popular podcast Literary Disco, named a top literary podcast by the Washington Post. He is a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside where he founded and directs the Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts. With gimlet-eyed cool and razor-sharp wit, the spare, stylish stories in The Low Desert assemble a world of gangsters and con men, of do-gooders breaking bad and those caught in the crossfire. The uncle of an FBI agent spends his life as sheriff in different cities, living too close to the violent acts of men; a cocktail waitress moves through several desert towns trying to escape the unexplainable loss of an adopted daughter; a drug dealer with a penchant for karaoke meets a talkative lawyer and a silent clown in a Palm Springs bar. Raymond Carver meets Elmore Leonard in this extraordinary collection of contemporary crime writing set in the critically acclaimed Gangsterland universe, a series called "gloriously original" by The New York Times Book Review.