Forget Los Angeles or New Orleans: Sacramento is a city made for classic noir tales of shadowy figures and hush-hush backroom deals. A frontier town that’s become the capital of the country’s most populous and prosperous state, this sprawling metropolis sets a perfect scene for Sacramento Noir, a collection of 13short stories from some of the city’s best writers. John Freeman, the collection’s editor and a very frequent Alta Journal contributor, sits down with writer Naomi J. Williams and Alta’s editorial director, Blaise Zerega, to reveal how this collection came to be, share plotlines from each of their contributions (Sacramento Noir contains stories from both Freeman and Williams), and tell us why the Golden State’s capital and its salty underbelly provide an ideal setting for dark and compelling tales. Pop on your trench coat, pull down your fedora, and join us!

About the guests:

John Freeman is the author and editor of a dozen books, including Wind,Trees, a collection of poems; There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love, coedited with Tracy K. Smith; and Dictionary of the Undoing. A Sacramento native, he lives in New York City, where he is an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf. Once a month, he hosts the California Book Club for Alta Journal. His work has been translated into 22 languages.

Naomi J. Williams is the author of Landfalls (FSG 2015), long-listed for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in journals such as Zoetrope: All-Story, A Public Space, One Story, the Southern Review, and the Gettysburg Review. Her distinctions include a Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories Honorable Mention, Sustainable Arts Foundation grant, and residencies at Hedgebrook, Djerassi, and Willapa Bay AiR.

Williams was born in Japan and spoke no English until she was six years old. Educated at Princeton, Stanford, and UC Davis, today she makes her home in Sacramento. She has taught creative writing at UC Davis, Saint Mary’s College, Sacramento City College, and the low-residency MFA program at Ashland University in Ohio.

About the book:

Edited by John Freeman, Sacramento Noir features brand-new stories by Naomi J. Williams, William T. Vollmann, Maureen O'Leary, Reyna Grande, Jamil Jan Kochai, Maceo Montoya, Nora Rodriguez Camagna, Shelley Blanton-Stroud, Luis Avalos, José Vadi, Janet Rodriguez, Jen Soong, and Freeman himself.

Here are some notable quotes from the event:

  • On Sacramento as the setting for this noir collection: “Sacramento is a very sunny place, and it’s really hot, and it seems very pleasant, but it’s also the capital, and a lot of things happen there, right behind closed doors. A lot of deals get struck. And it also has a history—a long history—that is not always real clear. When I was asked if I wanted to submit something for this book, the first thing I thought of was the history of what happened to Japantown in Sacramento. That is a history that many people who’ve lived in Sacramento for a long time know nothing about, but the city is filled with stories like that.” —Williams
  • On putting together this collection: “One of the fun things about putting together an anthology is it’s not sort of connecting the dots, made to order. People go off and do unexpected things. And so when this all came in, it gave me a very clear portrait of 13 original imaginations and the kind of dream city they live in—as well as the city that exists right on top of the dream city—and that’s what makes this series of anthologies so potent.” —Freeman
  • On the importance of water in Sacramento: “Water’s a big deal in California, and Sacramento is at the confluence of two rivers. Those rivers figure in a lot of the stories. And I’m thinking especially of Nora Rodriguez Camagna’s story, where there’s a canal mentioned right on the first page. And you just know that canal is trouble, and trouble comes through that canal for that canal from that canal.” —Williams
  • On collaborating in a city: “Cities in general sometimes can feel like sites of competition because they are, as everything you just said makes clear, but they are also sites of intense community and collaboration. And Sacramento has a literary community, but it’s slightly dispersed. One of the greatest parts about this was watching it sort of reassemble for some of the events we had in Sacramento—and there are more coming up in April—and that to me was really, really rewarding.” —Freeman

Check out these links to some of the topics brought up this week.