Keith Hartman

Keith grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, which in addition to being "Rocket City USA" is also one of the few cities in America ever captured by a Russian general. (One of those really odd things that happened during the Civil War.) He graduated from Princeton University, then went on to study at the London School of Economics, then started a PhD in Finance at Duke. Sometime around the third year of his PhD program, he realized that he really didn't want to spend the rest of his life teaching MBA's how to screw each other, and ran away to become a writer. His first book was Congregations in Conflict, an examination of nine different churches and how they dealt with the issue of homosexuality, sometimes in surprising ways. The book was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, and Keith appeared as a guest on NPR's Talk of the Nation in conjunction with it. His second book, The Gumshoe, the Witch, and the Virtual Corpse is one of those novels that's hard to categorize. The critics have alternately described it as science fiction, mystery, social commentary, magic realism, and even a coming of age story. It won two Spectrum Awards for gay science fiction, was picked as one of the "Ten Best Novels of the Year" by The Drood Review of Mysteries, and was a double nominee for the Lambda Literary Awards in the Mystery and Science Fiction categories. His third book, Gumshoe Gorilla was also a nominee for the Lambda Award. In 2009 Keith shot several marriage-equality PSA's, designed to poke fun at California's ban on same-sex marriage. In 2010 Keith's first feature film hit the festival circuit. You Should Meet My Son! won "Best Picture" at nine film festivals, as well as awards for "Best Screenplay", "Best Actress", and "Best Supporting Actress". It's now available on Amazon and I-tunes. Keith's latest novella, Murder Under the Buried Sky, came out in 2011. And in 2014 he released his second feature film Real Heroes, a comedy about a group of B-string superheroes who go on a reality TV show to promote their careers.