Richard Layman is managing director of Layman Poupard Publishing and president of Bruccoli Clark Layman. He is editor in chief of the Literature Criticism Series (112 volumes/year) and the Dictionary of Literary Biography, which his companies produce for Gale/Cengage. He is a trustee of the Dashiell Hammett Literary Property Trust and has written or edited twenty books on topics in American literature and social history. He lives in Columbia with his wife, Nancy.  
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