About S. C. Gwynne
Sam is currently a Senior Editor--a
glorified name for a writer--at Texas Monthly magazine, where he
has mostly worked (except for a stint at the Dallas Morning News
from 2010-2011) since the year 2000. His work included cover stories on
White House advisor Karl Rove, NASA, Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick,
and the King Ranch.
Other
subjects of his feature stories include: Dell Computer, Vice President
Dick Cheney and Halliburton, and a week-long solo camping trip in Big
Bend. His 2005 story on lethal Houston surgeon Eric Scheffey was
published in “The Best American Crime Writing, 2006” by Harper Perennial
Press. In 2008 he won the National City and Regional Magazine Award for
“Writer of the Year.” He also writes periodically for Outside magazine.
In 2011 he wrote about a canoe trip down the Pecos River in Texas, and
in 2012 he traveled to Bikini Atoll, in the South Pacific, where the
Americans tested their atomic weapons, to write a story about the
Bikinians' attempt to return to their island.
Prior to joining Texas Monthly, Sam worked for Time Magazine for 12
years as Correspondent, Bureau Chief, National Correspondent and Senior
Editor. He wrote some 200 stories for Time, including 6 cover stories.
He traveled throughout the United States, and to England, Austria,
France, Belgium, Spain, and Russia to report stories. He won a number of
awards for his work at Time, including a National Headliners Award for
his work on the Columbine High School shootings. He also won the Gerald
Loeb Award, the country’s most prestigious award for business writing,
the Jack Anderson Award as the best investigative reporter, and the John
Hancock Award for Distinguished Financial Writing. He has also written
for the New York Times, Harper’s, the Los Angeles Times, the
San
Francisco Chronicle, California Magazine, The Boston Globe and many
other publications. He is the former editor-in-chief of “California
Business” magazine, then the nation’s largest regional business
magazine. Prior to his career in journalism, Gwynne was a French teacher
and an international banker.
He is the author of three books, “Selling Money,” about his years as an
international banker, and “The Outlaw Bank” about the $20 billion BCCI
bank fraud. “Outlaw Bank” was named one of Business Week Magazine’s Top
Ten Books of the year. In May 2010 his book “Empire of the Summer Moon”
was published by Scribner. The book spent four months on the New York
Times top 10 Bestseller list. Empire was later a finalist for both the
Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and won the
Texas Book Award and the
Oklahoma Book Award.
In 2007-8 he was President of the Board of Directors of Caritas of
Austin, one of the city’s leading charities that provides assistance in
the form of food, rent and utility payments, and counseling to people in
need. He has also taught advanced reporting and feature writing at the
University of Texas School of Journalism, with the title of Lecturer.
Sam has a bachelor’s degree in history from Princeton University and a
master’s Degree in writing from Johns Hopkins University, where he
studied under the acclaimed novelist John Barth. He lives in the Lost
Creek section of Austin, Texas with his wife Katie, an artist, and his
daughter Maisie, an engineering student at the University of Southern
California.
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With former Bikini Mayor Alson Kelen in the Bikini lagoon, near the Bravo site where the hydrogen bomb was tested. Colors that I had never seen before.
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The Bikini Gang. On location for Outside Magazine for my story about Bikini Atoll, where the Americans tested nuclear weapons and where the former residents are trying to return. I spent a fascinating week in the Marshall Islands, most of it on Bikini. The story "Paradise With an Asterisk" came out last year (see "articles")
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© Copyright 2011-2013 S. C. Gwynne. All rights reserved.
Created and managed by Steven A. Anderson (Steven Law). A member of the ReadWest Foundation, Inc TM