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Bio (Brief Version)
Brad Parks' first novel, Faces of the Gone, landed on several prominent critics' lists as being among the top mystery debuts of 2009. It has been shortlisted for a Nero Award and was lauded by Library Journal as "the most hilariously funny and deadly serious mystery debut since Janet Evanovich's ONE FOR THE MONEY." Yahoo.com called Brad "the literary love child of (Janet) Evanovich and (Harlan) Coben." The Dartmouth College graduate spent a dozen years as a reporter for The Washington Post and The Newark Star-Ledger and is now a full-time novelist. He lives with his wife and two small children in Virginia, where is working on the next Carter Ross novels, scheduled for publication in 2011 and 2012. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Brad Parks started writing professionally at 14, when he discovered two important things about his hometown newspaper, The Ridgefield (Conn.) Press: One, it paid freelancers 50 cents a column inch for articles about local high school sports; and, two, it ran most submissions at their original length. For Brad, that meant he could make more money writing than babysitting. For the parents of the girls' basketball players at Ridgefield High, that meant glowing accounts of their daughters' games that ran on for no less than 40 inches. This launched Brad on a 20-year journalism career, one that continued at Dartmouth College—where he founded a weekly sports newspaper—and included stops at The Washington Post and The (Newark, N.J.) Star-Ledger. A sportswriter who later switched to news, he covered everything from the Super Bowl to the Masters, from small-town pizza wars to Hurricane Katrina. His work was recognized by, among others, the Associated Press Sports Editors, the National Headliner Awards, the National Association of Black Journalists and the New Jersey Press Association, which gave its top award for enterprise reporting to Brad's 40-year retrospective on the Newark riots. He also covered a quadruple homicide in Newark, which provided the real-life launching point for the fictional manuscript now known as Faces of the Gone. Brad left the newspaper industry in 2008 to become a full-time author/stay-at-home Dad to two young children. He and his wife, Melissa, now live in Virginia, where he is currently working on the next of what he hopes will be many Carter Ross Mysteries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  |
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