Michael Nava: Carved in Bone

Reading and Q&A with the six-time Lambda Literary Award-winning mystery writer, Michael Nava.

Michael Nava is the author of an acclaimed series of eight novels featuring gay, Latino criminal defense lawyer Henry Rios, who The New Yorker called “a detective unlike any previous protagonist in American noir.” The New York Times Book Review has called Nava “one of our best” writers. He is also the author of an award-winning historical novel, The City of Palaces, set at the beginning of the 1910 Mexican revolution. His first new Rios novel in 20 years, Carved in Bone, was released by Persigo Press on October 1, 2019. Set in San Francisco in 1984, Kirkus praised the book for its “refreshing emotional depth and a gay narrative seldom seen in thrillers.” Publisher’s Weekly said of the novel: “An authentic portrait of [San Francisco] in the early days of the AIDS crisis complements a satisfying mystery.”

In addition, he is the writer/producer of the Henry Rios Mysteries Podcast which adapted the first Rios novel, Lay Your Sleeping Head into an 18-episode audio drama available on I-tunes, Spotify and other podcast platforms. In 2019, he founded Persigo Press, through which he hopes to publish LGBTQ writers and writers of color who write genre fiction that combines fidelity to the conventions of their genre with exceptional literary merit.