Rock and a Hard Place Press, LLC is an independent publisher of literary noir, crime, and dark fiction. The publisher focuses on narratives about marginalized, oppressed or "othered" characters -- individuals struggling with poverty, drug use, mental and physical health challenges, disability, sexual or gender identity, institutional racism, prejudice, bias -- and what they do next. The flagship publication from RHP Press is Rock and a Hard Place Magazine, a "Chronicle of Bad Decisions and Desperate People."

Mike McHone is an award-winning mystery author and former journalist. His work has appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Rock and a Hard Place, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Mystery Magazine (formerly Mystery Weekly), The AV Club, Playboy, the Anthony Award-Nominated anthology Under the Thumb: Stories of Police Oppression edited by SA Cosby, as well as numerous other publications. He is the 2020 winner of the Mystery Writers of America's Hugh Holton Award for his soon-to-be-published novel "You Make Yourselves Another," and appeared on the prestigious Ellery Queen's Readers Poll that same year for his short story "A Drive-By on Chalmers Road?" Visit him online at www.mikemchone.com.

Nolan Knight is the author of GALLOWS DOME, THE NEON LIGHTS ARE VEINS and BENEATH THE BLACK PALMS, a fourth generation Angeleno whose short fiction has been featured in various publications including Akashic Books, Thuglit, Crimespree Magazine, Shotgun Honey, Tough and Needle. He is a former staff writer for Los Angeles' Biggest Music Publication, the L.A. Record, and currently resides in Long Beach. Peep more at NolanKnight.com / Insta: @Nolan_Knight_

Meagan Lucas is the author of the award-winning novel, Songbirds and Stray Dogs (2019) and the forthcoming collection, Here in the Dark (Shotgun Honey, July 2023). Meagan’s short work can be found in places like Santa Fe Writers’ Project, Still: The Journal, Bull Magazine, Change Seven, and Pithead Chapel. Meagan is Pushcart, Best of the Net, Derringer, and Canadian Crime Writers’ Award of Excellence nominated, won the 2017 Scythe Prize for Fiction, and Songbirds and Stray Dogs was North Carolina’s selection for the Library of Congress Center for the Book’s 2022 Route 1 Reads program. She teaches Creative Writing at Robert Morris University and is the Editor-in-Chief of Reckon Review. Born and raised on a small island in Northern Ontario, she now calls the mountains of Western North Carolina home.