Not to be confused with John D. MacDonald

Ross Macdonald is the pseudonym of the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar (December 13, 1915 – July 11, 1983). He is best known for his series of hardboiled novels set in southern California and featuring private detective Lew Archer.

Millar was born in Los Gatos, California, and raised in his parents' native Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, where he started college. When his father abandoned his family unexpectedly, Macdonald lived with his mother and various relatives, moving several times by his sixteenth year. The prominence of broken homes and domestic problems in his fiction has its roots in his youth.

In Canada, he met and married Margaret Sturm in 1938. They had a daughter, Linda, who died in 1970. He began his career writing stories for pulp magazines. Millar attended the University of Michigan, where he earned a Phi Beta Kappa key and a Ph.D. in literature. While doing graduate study, he completed his first novel, The Dark Tunnel, in 1944. At this time, he wrote under the name John Macdonald, in order to avoid confusion with his wife, who was achieving her own success writing as Margaret Millar. He then changed briefly to John Ross Macdonald before settling on Ross Macdonald, in order to avoid mixups with contemporary John D. MacDonald. After serving at sea as a naval communications officer from 1944 to 1946, he returned to Michigan, where he obtained his Ph.D. degree.

(cited from interview by Ron Forbes-Roberts, Vancouver 2007)

David Ross Macdonald is a guitarist and singer/songwriter who is also known as the drummer for Australian folk band The Waifs.

Born into a musical household in Millicent, Australia, David Ross MacDonald says of his childhood, “There were always instruments to muck around with at home. I played piano as a kid and took some classical guitar lessons as a teenager.” Inspired by Stewart Copeland, drummer for The Police, MacDonald took up the drums and while getting his degree in Geology he drummed in his geology department’s “glam band”, The Rock Doctors. After working as a geologist for two years he decided to get serious about drumming and enrolled in a jazz school in Perth.

He returned to work as a geologist but kept his hand in music and joined the Ragabillys. The band was fronted by guitarist Rodney Vervest whose fingerstyle guitar work reignited MacDonald’s interest in the instrument. "I loved watching him play, “says MacDonald. “I picked up the guitar after an absence of many years and he gave me a few lessons."

Linwood Barclay is a Canadian-American humourist, author and former columnist. He has published books of autobiography and both humorous and dramatic detective fiction, and he formerly wrote the thrice-weekly humour column in the Toronto Star, as well as releasing a podcast with his articles. He recently took a one year sabbatical to promote his mystery novels. He planned to return to the Star in September 2008 but on June 28, 2008 he wrote his last column announcing his retirement from the Star.

Barclay lives in Burlington, Ontario with his wife and son.

Jeff Lang (born 9 November 1969) is an Australian songwriter, singer and slide guitarist. A leading performer in the Australian roots music scene and purveyer of his self-described "disturbed folk" style, which incorporates primarily folk, blues and rock. The songwriting in his music is heavily influenced by the folk music of the Southern United States and British Isles but has distinctly Australian lyrical content whilst his guitar playing mixes folk, blues and rock styles with Indian and African modalities. He plays various types of guitar, both slide and standard, as well as banjo, mandolin, Chumbush and drums. In Addition to other awards Lang's 1996 album Native Dog Creek was named 'Best Australian Blues Album' in a Rhythms Magazine readers poll, as were his 2005 release You Have To Dig Deep To Bury Daddy and the 2006 album Dislocation Blues, a collaboration with the late Chris Whitley, while his 2002 collaboration with Bob Brozman won an ARIA award for Best Blues and Roots Music album.