“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 a contributing editor at Esquire and a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow. His first book, The Tragedy of True Crime, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2025 and an NPR Best Book of the Year. His writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Rolling Stone. 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 in Reviews and Criticism. He’s serving his twenty-fifth year in prison at Sing Sing Correctional Facility and will be eligible for parole in 2029.
