Minnesota Mystery Night

 Larry Millett is the author of nine mystery novels, six novellas and three short stories.

His novels feature Sherlock Holmes and Dr.John Watson as well as St. Paul saloon keeper and part-time detective Shadwell Rafferty. One of the novels, Sherlock Holmes and the Ice Palace Murders, was adapted to the stage by Jeffrey Hatcher.   Millett's most recent novel is aptly named, Rafferty's Last Case. 

Prior to writing mysteries, Millett spent much of his career as a writer, reporter and editor for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, joining the newspaper in 1972. In 1984, he won a Knight Fellowship to the University of Michigan to study architectural history and theory. Upon his return, Millett became the newspaper’s first architecture critic. He held that post until his retirement from the Pioneer Press in June of 2002. 

Also, while at the Pioneer Press, Millett and fellow reporter Don Boxmeyer served for several years as clue writers for the annual Winter Carnival medallion hunt.

Millett has also written 15 works of nonfiction and many articles for publications, including Architecture, InlandArchitect, Architecture Minnesota and Minnesota History magazines.

A native of Minneapolis, Millett is a graduate of St. John’s University, (BA, English 1969) and the University of Chicago (MA, English, 1970). 

David Mura is a poet, creative nonfiction writer, fiction writer, critic, playwright and performance artist.  A Sansei or third generation Japanese American, Mura has written two memoirs: Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei , which won a 1991 Josephine Miles Book Award from the Oakland PEN and was listed in the New York Times Notable Books of Year, and Where the Body Meets Memory: An Odyssey of Race, Sexuality and Identity. His novel Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award, the John Gardner Fiction Prize and Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award.

Mura’s most recent book, Exit, Miss Saigon, is a memoir about his life as an Asian American artist and activist. His last two books were The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and Our American Narratives and A Stranger’s Journey: Race, Identity & Narrative Craft in Writing.  With essayist Carolyn Holbrook, Mura co-edited the 2021 anthology of Minnesota BIPOC writers, We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World.  

Mura has written four books of poetry, including Angels for the Burning and The Last Incantations. His second, The Colors of Desire, won the Carl Sandburg Literary Award from the Friends of the Chicago Public Library, and his first After We Lost Our Way was a National Poetry Contest winner. 

Mura also co-produced, wrote and narrated the Emmy winning documentary by Twin Cities Public Television, Armed With Language, about the Japanese American Military Intelligence Service linguists who served in WWII. In 2024 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in General Nonfiction.