Meredith Cole won the St. Martin’s Press/Malice Domestic Best Traditional First Mystery competition with her book Posed for Murder. The book was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Novel. Her second book, Dead in the Water continued the adventures of Lydia McKenzie in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Meredith started her career as a filmmaker, directing a documentary her senior year at Smith College. She wrote and directed the dramatic feature, Floating, about a group of friends growing up and apart, while getting her M.A. at American University. The film premiered at the New York Film and Video Festival, and received a Kodak Film grant. Her second feature, Achilles’ Love, was a romantic comedy shot on 35mm. It was released by Castle Hill in 2000 and was called “…a valentine to the warm ties of Pittsburgh’s Greek Americans and to the bumpy road of love “ by the New York Times.

Meredith’s screenplays have placed in the finals the Chesterfield, as well as other competitions. She was named a Playwriting/Screenwriting fellow by the New York Foundation for the Arts, and taught directing at the School of Visual Arts. She also taught novel writing and mystery writing at the University of Virginia and at WriterHouse.

Her short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and many other anthologies. She is one of the featured authors in Making Story: Twenty-One Writers and How They Plot, as well as Writes of Passage.

Meredith has a podcast called “The Writer’s Story” with fellow author Kristin Swenson. The discuss writing and interview a different author every month on their writing journey.

Meredith Cole currently resides in Charlottesville, Virginia with her husband, son and two crazy cats, and is hard at work on her next novel.

Meredith Cole. Photo by Jack Looney.