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Nick Wilgus

May 30, 2019

Nick Wilgus was born in the United States in 1964. In his early youth, he had a religious vocation and became a Franciscan Brother. After leaving the Catholic order, he lived in Thailand for two decades, where he was Editor in Chief of the “Outlook” section of the Bangkok Post; he also did comparatives studies in religion, specializing in Thai Buddhism, and published the anthology Keeping the Faith: Thai Buddhism at the Crossroads in 2001.

His novel Mindfulness and Murder (2003), which was translated into Spanish by Verdecielo Ediciones with the title Asesinato y reverencia en Bangkok, is the first of a series featured by the characters of Father Ananda, a Buddhist monk and detective, and his assistant Jak, who inhabit a monastery located in the center of the Thai capital. The other two titles in the series are Killer Karma (2008) and The Garden of Hell (2010). Mindfulness and Murder was adapted and made into a film by director Tom Waller in 2011; the film’s lead actor, Vithaya Pansringam, was awarded the Thailand National Film Association Prize to the best featured actor, for his portrayal of Father Ananda.

Wilgus is a prolific author. He published his first short-story at 17, in a magazine specializing in the horror genre; he wrote Mindfulness and Murder in the course of two weeks and many of his titles have several reprints. His novel Bilal’s Bread (2005) was nominated for a Lambda Prize; the same title and the novel Adventures of the Birdshit Foreigner (2006), published under the pseudonym Suleyman X, deal with the difficulties experienced by homosexual adolescents under the status of migrants or refugees. Other recently published titles are the novels Sugar Tree, Shaking the Sugar Tree (2014), Stones in the Road (2015) and Go Tell It on the Mountains (2016).

In addition to his continued interest in spirituality and religious studies, and his well-known work in the crime and mystery genre, Nick Wilgus has written fiction dealing with the issue of mental health, as in The Man Who Got Lost (2012). He now resides in Mississippi, in the southern United States.