John Temple is an associate professor of journalism at West Virginia University and author of two nonfiction books. Temple’s current book project, entitled American Pain, traces the rise and fall of the nation’s biggest painkiller trafficking ring.
Temple’s last book, The Last Lawyer, won the 2010 Scribes Award, given by the Society of Legal Writers to honor the year’s best law-related book. The Last Lawyer chronicled the nation’s most experienced and innovative death row attorney as he slugged out his toughest case. The book has been covered by C-SPAN, the Washington Post, the Raleigh News & Observer, and dozens of other media outlets and blogs. Leonard Pitts, the Pulitzer-winning syndicated columnist, wrote, “The Last Lawyer is a compulsively readable indictment of a fatally flawed system. It reads like first-class legal fiction, but it’s far more compelling because it is, tragically, legal fact.”
Temple also published a narrative nonfiction book in 2005 called Deadhouse, about the exploits of deputy coroners in Pittsburgh. The book shadows the death investigators for a year as they worked murder scenes in the projects and pulled floaters from the Allegheny River.
Before becoming a professor, Temple was a reporter for metro daily newspapers in Tampa and Pittsburgh. He is the father of two sons, 9 and 11. His wife, Hollee Schwartz Temple, is a law professor and author of the inspiring book, Good Enough Is the New Perfect: Finding Happiness and Success in Modern Motherhood (Harlequin, 2011). For more about John Temple, visit his website at www.johntemplebooks.com.
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