Edgar Award-winning playwright, novelist, public radio essayist, popular culture scholar, actor, director, and audiobook narrator, Gary Earl Ross retired in 2013 from a language arts professorship at the University at Buffalo Educational Opportunity Center. Named Erie County's 2003 Artist of the Year, Ross has published more than 200 short stories, poems, essays, and scholarly papers. He has won numerous awards for writing and teaching, including a LIFT Fellowship for his fiction, two ASI-DEC grants for his fiction, three Emanuel Fried Outstanding New Play Awards (Matter of Intent, The Guns of Christmas, and The Mark of Cain), a NYSCA Individual Artists grant (Stoker's Guest), a Saltonstall Foundation Playwriting Grant (The Scavenger's Daughter), a Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award (Matter of Intent), an Excellence Award from United University Professions and State University of New York, and for his public radio essays first place commentary awards from the New York Associated Press and the New York Broadcasters' Association. In 2008 readers of the alternative newsweekly Artvoice voted him the Best Writer in Buffalo.
His books include The Wheel of Desire and Other Intimate Hauntings (2000), Shimmerville: Tales Macabre and Curious (2002), the children's tale Dots (2002), Blackbird Rising: A Novel of the American Spirit (2009), WordCraft, A Concise Handbook for the Everyday Writer (2013), Nickel City Blues, A Gideon Rimes Mystery (2017, 2021), Nickel City Crossfire (2021), Nickel City Storm Warning (2021), Nickel City Naked Lady (2022), and Beneath the Ice and Other Stories (2021). His public radio essays encouraged SEG Publishing to have him record his own audiobooks for the Rimes series, as well as other books.
His staged plays have appeared in Buffalo, Kenmore, Rochester, and Springville, NY; New York City; Los Angeles, CA; Tulsa, OK; London, England; Manchester, England; Lancing, West Sussex, England; Kamsack, Saskatchewan, Canada; Battlefords, Saskatchewan, Canada; Shanghai, China; Manipal, India; Lucknow, India; South Orange, NJ; Spring Lake, NJ; and Almaty, Kazakhstan. They include Sleepwalker: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (2002, Towne Players in Kenmore), Matter of Intent (2005, Ujima Theater Company in Buffalo), Picture Perfect (2007, Tennessee Stage Company, Knoxville) The Best Woman (2007, Ujima), Murder Squared (Ujima, 2010), The Scavenger's Daughter (2011, Urban Stages in NYC), The Mark of Cain (2016 Manny Fried Playhouse in Buffalo), The Trial of Trayvon Martin (2016 Manny Fried Playhouse in Buffalo), Stoker's Guest (Western Door Playhouse 2022), and Split Wit (2023, Inclusive Theater of WNY and the Paul Robeson Theatre). The Scavenger's Daughter and Matter of Intent were both filmed by CITOC Productions of India under the titles Scavenger's Daughter (2017) and State vs. Malti Mhaske (2018).
Ross is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, Crime Writers of Color, Private Eye Writers of America, and the Just Buffalo Literary Center. He is a past president of the Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association (MAPACA), as well as past chair of its film and comics areas, and past editor the MAPACA Almanack. Ross was also past playwright-in-residence at the prestigious Ujima Company and former associate artistic director of the Subversive Theatre Collective.
An avid reader, film buff, bicyclist, gamer, and occasional actor and director, Gary Earl Ross is the father of five adult children and lives in Buffalo, New York.
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