“ONE OF OUR MOST INCISIVE WRITERS ON CRIME, INCARCERATION, AND THE HUMAN LIVES BEHIND STATISTICS.”
The Tragedy of True Crime
Available September 23, 2025
THE TRAGEDY OF TRUE CRIME
is a first-person journalistic account of the lives of four men who have killed, written by a man who has killed. Lennon entered the New York prison system with a sentence of twenty-eight years to life, but after he stepped into a writing workshop at Attica Correctional Facility, his whole life changed. Reporting from the cellblock and the prison yard, Lennon challenges our obsession with true crime by telling the full life stories of men now serving time for the lives they took.
JOHN J. LENNON is serving his twenty-fourth year behind bars, currently in Sing Sing Correctional Facility. His writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, and New York magazine. His work has been anthologized in the Best American Magazine Writing, and he’s twice been a finalist for the National Magazine Award, in feature writing and reviews and criticism. His feature essay “The Apology Letter” was part of the Washington Post Magazine’s special issue that won the National Magazine Award. He will be eligible for parole in 2029.
