Megan Abbott

Megan Abbott
Abbott in 2015
Born	(1971-08-21) August 21, 1971 (age 53) Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
Occupation	Author, screenwriter, journalist
Language	English
Citizenship	United States
Education	University of Michigan New York University (PhD)
Genre	Crime fiction
Notable awards	Edgar Award 2008 Queenpin Barry Award – Best Paperback Novel 2008 Queenpin
Relatives	Philip Abbott (father)
Website
www.meganabbott.com

Megan Abbott (born August 21, 1971)^[1] is an American author of crime fiction and of non-fiction analyses of hardboiled crime fiction. Her novels and short stories have drawn from and re-worked classic subgenres of crime writing from a female perspective.^[2][3] She is also an American writer and producer of television.

Growing up, Abbott was greatly intrigued by the 1930 and 1940s movies she saw at a movie theater in Grosse Pointe. She believes that watching these films as a child gave her her lifelong interest in crime fiction.^[4] Abbott graduated from the University of Michigan.^[5] She received her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University, and has taught at NYU, the State University of New York and New School University. In 2013 and 2014, she served as the John Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi.^[6]

In 2002, Abbott published her first book, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir, which The Paris Review described as "a prescient work of critical theory."^[7] In it, Abbott challenges the archetypes of the "tough guy" and "femme fatale" common to noir literature.^[8]

Three years later, Abbott published Die a Little,^[9] the first of several novels presenting woman-centered takes on traditional noir tropes.^[7] Set in midcentury Los Angeles, the story centered on Lora King, a schoolteacher whose brother Bill falls in love with Alice Steele, a former costumer for the film industry. Suspicious of Alice's motives and jealous of her hold over Bill, Lora sets out to investigate Alice's background, only to find herself pulled into the dark side of Hollywood. Kirkus Reviews reviewed the book favorably.^[9]

In addition to literature, Abbott has written for major journals and newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times.^[10] She also writes a blog with novelist Sara Gran.^[11]

Abbott was a screenwriter for The Deuce,^[12] an HBO show that premiered in 2017 and deals with pornography and the Mafia in New York in the 1970s and beyond.^[13] In 2019, she adapted her bestselling novel Dare Me into a TV series on USA Network.^[14] She served as co-showrunner on the series, along with Gina Fattore.^[15]

Abbott was influenced by film noir, classic noir fiction, and Jeffrey Eugenides's novel The Virgin Suicides.^[16][17] Two of her novels make reference to notorious crimes. The Song Is You (2007) is based around the disappearance of Jean Spangler in 1949, and Bury Me Deep (2009) on the 1931 case of Winnie Ruth Judd, dubbed "the Trunk Murderess".^[18]

Abbott has won the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for outstanding fiction. Time named her one of the "23 Authors That We Admire" in 2011.^[19] Publishers Weekly gave her 2011 novel The End of Everything a starred review.^[20]

• —— (2007). A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir. ISBN 9780979270994.

• —— (2002). The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir. ISBN 0312294816.

• —— (2005). Die a Little. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9780743261708.
• —— (2007). The Song Is You. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9780743291712.
• —— (2007). Queenpin. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9781416534280.
• —— (2009). Bury Me Deep. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9781416599098.
• —— (2011). The End of Everything. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 9780316097796.
• —— (2012). Dare Me. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 9780316097772.
• —— (2014). The Fever. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 9780316231053.
• —— (2016). You Will Know Me. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 9780316231077.
• —— (2018). Give Me Your Hand. Pan Macmillan. ISBN 9781509855681.
• —— (2021). The Turnout. G.P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 9780593084908.
• —— (2023). Beware the Woman. G.P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 9780593084939.

• —— (2025). El Dorado Drive.

• "Oxford Girl" (2016). Appeared in Mississippi Noir.^[28]
• "Girlie Show" (2016). Appeared in In Sunlight or in Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper.^[29]
• "Little Men" (2015). Appeared in The Best American Mystery Stories 2016.^[30]
• "My Heart Is Either Broken" (2013). Appeared in Dangerous Women.

• Megan Abbott's website
• Megan Abbott at IMDb
• Short statement on why she thinks LA is so associated with noir.
• Interview