An agent is nothing without great clients. Robin Mizell is fortunate to represent talented writers who are also trusted collaborators and skillful networkers.

 

Miha Mazzini is the author of twenty-three books published in eight languages. His stories can be found in more than a dozen anthologies in seven languages, including the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology, Volume 4 and Pushcart Prize XXXVI in 2011. Two of his screenplays have been produced as feature films, and he has written and directed five short films.

Urška Zupanec's English translation of Mazzini's new novella will appear in 2012. The German Lottery (CB editions) is set in 1950, in a country with a totalitarian regime, where every word can be fatal and everyone is spying on everyone. The story’s naively optimistic protagonist, orphaned and injured during the Second World War, has been provided by the government with living quarters and a job as a postman. Determined to carry out his postal duties honorably, he nevertheless is seduced by a beautiful and manipulative married woman and becomes involved with double- and triple-crossing swindlers. The postman’s tale is lighthearted satire, a study of human nature, and a warning about the power of greed.

Mazzini possesses a PhD in anthropology from the Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis and an MA in creative writing for film and television from the University of Sheffield. He lives and works in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In 2012, he will be a kunst:raum sylt quelle foundation artist in residence in Rantum, on the German island of Sylt.

 

Rokus Klett, the Slovenian subsidiary of the German publishing conglomerate Klett, is the originator of the handy I Thought I Knew How to Google: 50 Tricks for Refining Your Search (HarperCollins India, 2012).

Written by usability expert Miha Mazzini and translated into English by Lučka Lučovnik, the illustrated guide to more efficient online research is designed for the novice or experienced computer user.

 

 

Mini Nair is the author of an adult novel, an illustrated middle-grade children's book, and a biography of a noted pharmaceutical scientist. She has spoken publicly to promote the efforts of the nonprofit organization Save the Girl Child, and her story idea was the basis for a film on sex selection produced for Population First, Mumbai.

Set in Mumbai during the Hindu-Muslim conflict of the early 1990s, Nair's novel The Fourth Passenger (ROMAN, 2011; Momentum, 2012) is the story of four women raised with traditional values, whose friendship and business partnership give them emotional solace, economic self-sufficiency, and the temerity to stand up to religious extremism. Having reached their thirties, the four friends are disillusioned with their lives and marriages—to an alcoholic husband, a zealously religious husband, an abusive husband, and a missing husband. Together, they decide to open an urban food stand, which they call Stree, the Hindustani word for woman. In order to establish the fledgling business, they must contend with extortionists, ruthless competitors, and religious intolerance. They also battle memories of a distant past, when two of them loved the same man. Their friendship ultimately goes beyond individual temperament, caste, religion, and sexual orientation and becomes as precious as sisterhood.

Nair's writing reveals her love of cooking and her deep affection for the city in which she was born and raised. She lives in Mumbai with her family and twin daughters and is a postgraduate in chemistry at the University of Mumbai.

 

Steve Shilstone maintains a perpetually perplexing daily blog of neo-Dadaist humor. He's the author of an extraordinary baseball novel and a nine-book series of children's adventure fantasies. His newest works of fiction, set in Northern California, include the short short story "Conversation with a Bear" in the Tahoe Blues anthology (Bona Fide, 2012).

A former postal worker and youth baseball coach, Shilstone holds a bachelor's degree in anthropology from UCLA. He now enjoys what he calls a "hippie-lite" artist's lifestyle in the San Francisco Bay area. "I’ve been painting pictures, drawing cartoons, writing stories for a half-century," he says. "When there is no canvas on the easel or story in the typewriter/computer, I feel uneasy."

 

Jeff Williams is the editor of two books, the author of short stories and popular and technical articles on mathematics, and co-author of the screenplay for a short television movie that recreates Shakespeare’s Macbeth in an orbiting space station. Since 1986, he has been a professor of mathematics and computer science at Brandon University in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada.

Dating from boyhood, Williams has enjoyed a keen interest in all things relating to World War II. His most recent creative work imagines an unlikely partnership between a young woman, newly recruited to the Allied cause, and a disaffected Austrian schoolteacher, whose mission takes them from the D-Day invasion of Normandy to the death throes of the Nazi regime in the ruins of Berlin.