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Biography
American

Kem Nunn

1948

Kem Nunn is the author who invented surf noir — a genre that combines surfing culture with literary noir and the dark underside of California. Tapping the Source (1984) — about a young man searching for his missing sister in the violent, drug-soaked surf culture of Huntington Beach — was a National Book Award finalist and remains one of the most original American crime novels of the 1980s. Dogs of Winter (1997) and Tijuana Straits (2004) continued his exploration of the Pacific coast's dangerous beauty.

Past sales0
PeriodContemporary
NationalityAmerican
1. Biography

A short life of the author

Kem Nunn (b. 1948) was born in 1948 in Pomona, California. He is a surfer. He studied at the University of California, Irvine. He has written for television, including HBO’s Deadwood and Sons of Anarchy.

Life and Career

Tapping the Source (1984) — about Ike Tucker, a young man from the California desert who travels to Huntington Beach to find his missing sister and descends into a world of surfing, drugs, motorcycle gangs, and murder — was a National Book Award finalist. It created the genre of surf noir: noir fiction set in the surf culture of coastal California, where the ocean’s beauty is inseparable from the violence and nihilism of the shore.

Unassigned Territory (1987) was a desert novel. Pomona Queen (1992) returned to inland California. Dogs of Winter (1997) — about a photographer searching for a legendary big-wave break in the remote coast of Northern California — is his most acclaimed novel, combining surfing, environmental destruction, and cultish communities.

Tijuana Straits (2004) was set on the polluted border coast between San Diego and Tijuana. Chance (2014) — a psychological thriller about a neuropsychiatrist — was adapted as a Hulu series starring Hugh Laurie (2016–2017).

Key Works

  • Tapping the Source (1984)
  • Dogs of Winter (1997)
  • Tijuana Straits (2004)

Collecting Nunn

Tapping the Source (1984, Delacorte) brings $50–$150 for firsts. Dogs of Winter (1997, Scribner) brings $20–$50.