New York Times bestselling author Don Winslow has written twenty novels, including The Kings of Cool, Savages, The Winter of Frankie Machine and the highly-acclaimed epics The Power of the Dog and The Cartel.
The son of a sailor and a librarian, Winslow grew up with a love of books and storytelling in a small Rhode Island coastal town. He left at age seventeen to study journalism at the University of Nebraska where he earned a degree in African Studies. While in college, he traveled to southern Africa, sparking a lifelong involvement with that continent.
Winslow’s travels took him to California and Idaho before he moved to New York City, making his living as a movie theater manager and, later, a private investigator in Times Square “before Mickey Mouse took it over.” He left to get a Master’s Degree in Military History and intended to go into the Foreign Service but instead joined a friend’s photographic safari firm in Kenya. He led trips there as well as hiking expeditions in southwestern China, and later directed Shakespeare productions during summers in Oxford, England.
While bouncing between Asia, Africa, Europe and America, Winslow wrote his first novel, A Cool Breeze on the Underground, which was nominated for an Edgar Award. With a wife and young son, Winslow went back to investigative work, mostly in California, where he and his family lived in hotels for almost three years as he worked cases and became a trial consultant. A film and publishing deal for his novel The Death and Life of Bobby Z allowed Winslow to become a full-time writer and settle in his beloved southern California, the setting for many of his books. Branching into television and film, Winslow, with his friend Shane Salerno, wrote a television series UC/Undercover and the two collaborated on the screenplay of his novel Savages.
His novels have attracted the attention of filmmakers and actors such as Oliver Stone, Michael Mann, Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott, Robert DeNiro and Leonardo DiCaprio. Twentieth Century Fox has optioned his next novel about a NYPD cop as well as The Cartel and The Power of the Dog. Earlier books Savages and The Death and Life of Bobby Z were made into films, too.
In addition to his novels, Winslow has published numerous short stories in anthologies and magazines such as Esquire, the LA Times Magazine and Playboy. His columns have appeared in the Huffington Post, CNN Online and other outlets.
Winslow is the recipient of the Raymond Chandler Award (Italy), the LA Times Book Prize, the Ian Fleming Silver Dagger (UK), The RBA Literary Prize (Spain) and many other prestigious awards.
He lives in southern California with his wife of thirty-one years.
