Otto Penzler - The Best American Crime Writing 2003

JOSHUA HAMMERhas been Newsweek’s Jerusalem bureau chief since January 2001. Before that, he was the magazine’s bureau chief in Nairobi, Buenos Aires, and Berlin. He is the author of Chosen by God: A Brothers Journey , a finalist for the 2000 Los Angeles Times Book Award, and the forthcoming A Season in Bethlehem: Unholy War in a Sacred Place .

SKIP HOLLANDSWORTHhas been writing crime stories for Texas Monthly for fifteen years. He has been nominated for the National Magazine Award four times and several of his articles have been optioned by film producers. He is now working on a nonfiction book for HarperCollins on the mysterious murders of seven women in Austin, Texas, in the late nineteenth century.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER, the author of the international bestseller The Perfect Storm and Fire , has been awarded a National Magazine Award and an SAIS-Novartis Prize for his journalism. He lives in New York.

TOM JUNODis a two-time winner of the National Magazine Award. He is a writer at large for Esquire , and lives in Marietta, Georgia.

JESSE KATZis a senior writer for The Los Angeles Magazine . His work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The New York Times Magazine , and Texas Monthly . He received a 2002 gold medal in reporting from the national City and Regional Magazine Association for his investigation into the murder of former Los Angeles police chief Bernard Parks’s granddaughter. As a Los Angeles Times reporter from 1985 to 2000, he was a member of the Metro staff that twice won Pulitzer Prizes in the spot news category, for the 1992 LA riots and for the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

JAY KIRKhas written for Harpers Magazine, The New York Times Magazine , the Chicago Reader , Nerve.com, and other publications. This story was nominated for a National Magazine Award.

ROBERT KURSONis a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and Harvard Law School. He is a senior editor at Chicago magazine, a frequent contributor to Esquire , and has written for Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine , and other publications.

PETER LANDESMANis a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. His nonfiction appears frequently in The New York Times Magazine . His first novel, The Raven , was awarded the American Academy of Arts and Letters prize for best first fiction in 1996. He lives in Los Angeles and New York with his wife, photographer and journalist Kimberlee Acquaro.

DOUG MOSTis a senior editor at Boston Magazine and a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Sports Illustrated and The New York Times Magazine . He’s had pieces chosen to appear in Best American Sports Writing and the first edition of Best American Crime Writing . He’s the author of Always in Our Hearts: Amy Grossberg, Brian Peterson, and the Baby They Didn’t Want

Award-winning journalist MAXIMILLIAN POTTERhas been on staff at GQ since 2000, covering sports, business, politics, and crime. He’s written for Outside, Premiere, Details , and Philadelphia Magazine . He lives with his wife and two sons in Pennsylvania.

PETER RICHMONDis a staff writer for GQ magazine, a commentator for NPR’s Morning Edition , and the author of three books. His fourth, a biography of the late singer Peggy Lee, will be published by Henry Holt in 2005. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine , and Rolling Stone .

JEFF TIETZhas written for The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly , and Rolling Stone . He lives in Texas.

PAIGE WILLIAMSis a native of Tupelo, Mississippi, and has written for The New York Times Magazine, Men’s Journal, Playboy , and Atlanta , and before that wrote for The Charlotte Observer . Now she lives in New York and is a first-year MFA candidate in fiction at Columbia University.

EVAN WRIGHTis a contributing editor to Rolling Stone , where he has been dubbed “ambassador to the underbelly” for his coverage of the West Coast’s peculiar underworld of porn magnates, celebrity drug addicts, anarchist environmentalists, Internet scam artists, punk skateboarder gangs, and unrepentant murderers. He previously worked for Larry Flynt as the entertainment editor at Hustler magazine. He has also contributed to Time Asia, Men’s Journal, ESPN magazine, and LA Weekly . During the past eighteen months he has reported from the Middle East on the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Evan Wright lives in Southern California.

LAWRENCE WRIGHTis a writer of books, magazine articles, and screenplays, both fiction and nonfiction. His screenplay, Siege , coauthored with Menno Meyjes and its director, Edward Zwick, based on Wright’s original story, was called by Panorama “the most chillingly prescient terrorism film of them all.” He lives in Austin, Texas.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

“The Journalist and the Terrorist” by Robert Sam Anson (Vanity Fair , August 2002). Copyright © 2002 by Robert Sam Anson. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Enron Wars” by Marie Brenner (Vanity Fair , April 2002). Copyright © 2002 by Marie Brenner. Reprinted by permission of International Creative Management, Inc.

“Sex, Lies, & Video Cameras” by Rene Chun (Details , April 2002). Copyright © 2002 by Rene Chun. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Keystone Kommandos” by Gary Cohen (The Atlantic Monthly , February 2002). Copyright © 2002 by Gary Cohen. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Murder on the Amazon” by Devin Friedman (Men’s Journal , April 2002). Copyright © 2002 by Men’s Journal LLC. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Men’s Journal LLC.

“How Two Lives Met in Death” by Joshua Hammer (Newsweek , April 15, 2002). Copyright © 2002 by Newsweek, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Newsweek .

“The Day Treva Throneberry Disappeared” by Skip Hollandsworth (Texas Monthly , March 2002). Copyright © 2002 by Texas Monthly, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Texas Monthly, Inc.

“Slaves of the Brothel” by Sebastian Junger (Vanity Fair , July 2002). Copyright © 2002 by Sebastian Junger. Reprinted by permission of the Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency, Inc.

“The Terrible Boy” by Tom Junod (Esquire , October 2002). Copyright © 2002 by Tom Junod. Reprinted by permission of Black, Inc.

“The Last Ride of Jesse James Hollywood” by Jesse Katz (Los Angeles Magazine , February 2002). Copyright © by Los Angeles Magazine . Reprinted by permission of Los Angeles Magazine .

“ My Undertaker, My Pimp” by Jay Kirk (Harpers Magazine , March 2002). Copyright © 2002 by Harper’s Magazine . Reprinted by permission of Harpers Magazine .

“The Bully of Toulon” by Robert Kurson (Chicago , September 2002). Copyright © 2002 by Robert Kurson. Reprinted by permission of International Creative Management, Inc.

“A Woman’s Work” by Peter Landesman (The New York Times Magazine , September 15, 2002). Copyright © by Peter Landesman. Reprinted by permission of The New York Times Special Features.