NOVA-Loudoun Faculty Wins Awards, Makes History

Josh Pachter (LO) has been teaching Communication Studies and Theater full-time at NOVA for the last ten years. For more than fifty years, though, he’s been writing, editing and translating short crime fiction. On May 1, the Short Mystery Fiction Society (SMFS) honored him with its annual Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award for Lifetime Achievement. On the same day, Josh also won one of the SMFS’s four annual competitive awards, the Derringer for Best Flash Story of 2019, making him the first person in the organization’s history to win both a Golden Derringer and a competitive Derringer in the same year. You can read Josh’s winning story, “The Two-Body Problem,” originally published in Mystery Weekly, October 2019. Click here for more of his work.