Vicki Hendricks was born in Covington, Kentucky, and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. She moved to Florida in 1973. Acclaimed as the “queen of noir” for revitalizing the genre with a female voice in the 1990s, she is known for her bold use of sexual elements that distinguish her neo-noir from the classic noir of the 1930s and 1950s. After earning a degree from Ohio State University and later a master’s degree in English, Hendricks taught literature and creative writing in Florida. Her debut novel, Miami Purity (1995), received rave reviews from publications such as The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist, cementing her reputation as an author capable of blending gritty realism, black humor, and unfiltered storytelling. Her works, often set in Florida’s seediest and most sensual locales, explore themes such as loneliness, desire, and human complexity in a style reminiscent of Flannery O’Connor and Erskine Caldwell. Her love of animals, already evident in Hendricks’s earlier novels, takes center stage in Fur People (2013), her
most mainstream novel. Her latest book is the horror comedy Chez Usher (2024).
