Award winning author Michael Niemann has long been interested in the sites where ordinary people’s lives and global processes intersect. He’s shared umqombothi with shack dwellers outside Cape Town, interviewed Morgan Tsvangirai, former Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, when he was still a trade union leader, and has seen Eduardo Mondlane’s dorm room at Northwestern University, faithfully recreated at the Museum of the Revolution in Maputo.
His thrillers featuring UN investigator Valentin Vermeulen are published by Coffeetown Press. Legitimate Business and Illicit Trade were published in March 2017. Illegal Holdings came out in March 2018 and won the 2019 Silver Falchion Award for Best Thriller at Killer Nashville. No Right Way went on sale in June 2019. The fifth Vermeulen thriller, Percentages of Guilt followed in November 2020. It was a finalist for the 2021 Silver Falchion Award at Killer Nashville. The Last Straw was published in November 2021.
His short stories have appeared in Vengeance, the 2012 Mystery Writers of America anthology edited by Lee Child, Mysterical-E, and Tough Crime. Africa Always Needs Guns, Big Dreams Cost Too Much and Some Kind of Justice are now available as Kindle singles.
On the non-fiction side, he is the author of A Spatial Approach to Regionalism in the Global Economy (2000). His academic articles have appeared in numerous journals and several edited books. Copies are available on this website in the non-fiction section.
Throughout his academic career, he has helped students of all ages and backgrounds to understand their role in constructing the world in which they live, and to take this role seriously.
He grew up in a small town in western Germany before moving to the United States. He has studied at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität in Bonn, Germany, and the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver where he received his PhD in International Studies. He lives in southern Oregon with his wife Lynne.
