Neely Tucker is a novelist, journalist and author based in Washington, D.C.
A seventh-generation Mississippian, he was born in Holmes County, then the poorest county in the poorest state in America. His newspaper work includes stops at the Miami Herald, the Detroit Free Press and seventeen years at The Washington Post. As a foreign correspondent, he was based in Poland and Zimbabwe, working in more than sixty countries or territories, covering civil wars or violent uprisings in Europe, the Mid-East and Africa. Elmore Leonard, a longtime friend, used him as the basis and namesake for a character in “Cuba Libre.”
His memoir, Love in the Driest Season, was named one of the best 25 Books of 2004 by Publisher’s Weekly, the American Bookseller’s Association, the New York City Library and won numerous other awards. “Life After Death,” a story about his wife’s seven-year odyssey to help convict her daughter’s killer, was nominated by the Post for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize.
“The Ways of the Dead,” “Murder, D.C.,” and “Only the Hunted Run,” the first novels in the Sully Carter series, have earned glowing praise, with Kirkus saying that “There’s no more satisfying sight than a writer who knows exactly what he’s doing — and only gets better at what he does.”
He lives with his wife, three children and one Rottweiler.
