J. A. Konrath

Joseph Andrew Konrath (born March 29, 1970, in Skokie, Illinois) is an American fiction writer working in the mystery, thriller, and horror genres. He writes as J. A. Konrath and Jack Kilborn.

Biography Konrath graduated from Columbia College in Chicago in 1992 and spent the next 12 years garnering close to five hundred rejections for nine unpublished novels. His tenth book, Whiskey Sour, was picked up by Hyperion in 2003 and was the first in a series featuring Lt. Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels of the Chicago Police Department. He's since published dozens of short stories and articles, been translated into eight languages, and edited an anthology called These Guns for Hire for Bleak House Books. In 2010 the seventh book in the Jack Daniels series was picked up for publication by AmazonEncore.

He currently lives in Schaumburg, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago. He teaches writing at the College of DuPage.

Awards Konrath won the 2005 Derringer Award for Flash Fiction and the 2006 Bob Kellog Humanitarian Award. He was 2nd place for the 2005 Ellery Queen Reader's Choice Award and was nominated in 2004 for the Macavity Awards, Anthony Awards, and Gumshoe Awards. He's also known for having an outspoken view on the publishing industry, blogging about topics such as the 2012 accusations by some industry pundits that Amazon has endangered book sales.