About Edward Humes

I’m a Southern California journalist and author of 16 nonfiction books, with the latest, The Forever Witness, coming Nov. 29, 2022. My work has earned a Pulitzer Prize and a PEN Award, among other honors.

As a narrative nonfiction writer I spend months, sometimes years, immersed in the lives and worlds of my characters. I gravitate most often toward human stories about the justice system, science, nature and sustainability.

Sometimes these subjects intersect in the same book. The Forever Witness is about the disappearance and murder of a young couple, a 32-year-old cold-case investigation, and the emergence of a revolutionary new crime-fighting science, genetic genealogy.

Right now I’m deep into a follow-up book to my campus-read favorite, Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair With Trash, a story about how wasteful Americans are without knowing it. Garbology has been a “One Book” community read at 30 campuses, cities and towns across the country.

Meanwhile, my bestselling Mississippi Mud, a true-crime murder mystery set in a historic Gulf Coast city steeped in corruption, is being developed as a series by Immersive Pictures.

No Matter How Loud I Shout takes readers inside the secretive world of juvenile justice and the lives of young people trapped in a dysfunctional system. Shout received a PEN Award for research nonfiction and the Investigative Editors and Reporters book prize. After publication, I was invited to testify before the U.S. Senate and the California Legislature about my year of immersion in the juvenile system, which included teaching a writing class to teenagers on the high-risk offender unit at Central Juvenile Hall. A poem by one boy inspired the book’s title—and won a city-wide writing contest.

Often the stories continue after publication. My book Burned, about flawed forensic science that sent a Los Angeles woman to prison, helped lead to her release, and took readers inside the world of the California Innocence Project. Here’s are some previously untold stories and new happy endings from some of my books.

Some background: For the past few years I’ve divided my time between Seattle and our long-time home in Southern California.

I grew up in Philadelphia and graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass.

I had no pets growing up but have made up for that shortcoming by having a family home filled with a variety of critters, including rescued greyhounds.

I volunteer with the Greysave rescue group, and during the pandemic, my family fostered seven dogs coming off the racetrack. The latest additions to my office staff are Valiant and Dottie, the two greyhounds pictured above.