Stuart M. Kaminsky is a prolific author, born in Chicago in 1934 to Leo and Dorothy Kaminsky. He earned a BS in Journalism, and an MA in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a PhD in Speech from Northwestern where he taught from 1973 until 1989. He was a professor and head of the film division for ten years until he moved to Florida State University in Sarasota in 1989 where he was founding director of the Graduate Conservatory in Film and Television Production. He left acadamia in 1994 to focus full-time on writing. Besides numerous mystery/suspense novels, he has written several film biographies, including those on Clint Eastwood, Gary Cooper, John Huston, and Don Siegel. He has also written textbooks on film and television writing. He has several screenwriting credits, including added dialoge for "Once Upon a Time in America." He was president of the Mystery Writers of America and has been nominated for six Edgar Allen Poe Awards. He won an Edgar in 1989 for his novel, "A Cold Red Sunrise."