Catriona McPherson is a Scottish-born, Davis-adjacent crime writer with a genuinely startling output: 36 novels and counting, spanning three very different worlds. There’s Dandy Gilver, her gently-born 1930s lady sleuth solving preposterously plotted murders across Scotland; a grittier series of 1940s amateur-sleuth mysteries; and a set of contemporary comic capers set in a barely-disguised version of her adopted Northern California hometown — plus, when the mood strikes, the modern psychological thrillers she calls her favorites to write.
Since immigrating to the U.S. in 2010, McPherson has collected two Agatha Awards, three Anthony Awards, six Lefty Awards, and two Macavity Awards, along with shortlist nods for the Edgar and the Mary Higgins Clark Award. She’s a lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime.
McPherson splits her time between Scotland and California, which gives her fiction the best of both: authentic Scottish weather and a wickedly accurate ear for the culture clash of being a transplant navigating small-town Northern California life.
Sarah Elizabeth will read the excerpt from The Dead Room by Catriona McPherson. Sarah is delighted to once again be reading for Stories on Stage Davis. She’s a Bay Area actress and has worked with such theaters as New Conservatory Theater Company, Altarena Playhouse, Shotgun Players, the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, and others. She has a certificate in Voiceover acting from Voice One in San Francisco and has recently been venturing into VO work.
Karin Levy is an Israeli-American writer and longtime Davis resident whose memoir, My Father’s Gardens, was nominated for a 2014 Pushcart Prize. Born in Israel, Levy spent her childhood shuttling between two countries, two languages, and two entirely different ideas of home — an experience she calls, without exaggeration, “a dual life.” That in-between-ness became the emotional terrain of her memoir: a coming-of-age story told in vignettes, moving between the Mediterranean and the Sacramento Valley, between a mother’s rules and a father’s gardens.
Levy earned her B.A. in Comparative Literature from UC Davis and her M.A. in Creative Writing from Sacramento State, and has taught composition and literature at the university level. These days, her writing lives closer to home: she’s a columnist for the Davis Enterprise, where her “Begin Again” column turns an unflinching, often funny eye on grief, memory, and the slow business of rebuilding a life after loss.
We will be presenting a selection from her current project, Betrayal. A story of two sisters on a collision course they never saw coming, Betrayal moves between the ordinary rhythms of a California family and the reverberations of a single, unforgettable moment — asking what we really owe the people we’re bound to, whether we choose them or not.
Victoria Goldblatt will read the excerpt from Betrayal by Karen Levy. Victoria, an award-winning playwright and storyteller, has been performing for over twenty years. She has done a variety of other work, including films, commercials, theater, voice-overs for TV and radio, along with her show, Cabaret Night with Victoria and Friends. Her stories have been performed at Wild Card Story Slam, Do Tell, and at Sacramento’s Story Guild. She was the former Casting Director for Stories on Stage in Sacramento, and was a member of the Steering Committee for the Playwrights Collaborative in Sacramento for over 7 years.She is currently a Neuroscience, Health, and Fitness Consultant and formerly in Human Resources.