John Sandford is the pseudonym of author and journalist John Camp, who won the Pulitzer Prize in journalism in 1986 and the Distinguished Writing Award of the American Society of Newspaper Editors for 1985.
Camp was born in 1944 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He attended the University of Iowa, where he received a bachelor’s degree in American Studies in 1966 and a master’s degree in journalism in 1971. After graduating from college in 1966, Camp spent two years in the Army, including service in Korea. He then worked as a reporter in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, before returning to the University of Iowa for his master’s degree. He later worked at newspapers in Miami and St. Paul.
Camp’s many interests include archaeology, outdoor sports (hunting, fishing, canoeing, and skiing), golf, and reading history. He now has homes in Lakeland Shores, Minnesota, and Pasadena, California.
For more information, see Sandford’s web site.
When Camp’s first two novels, Rules of Prey and The Fool’s Run, were scheduled to be published just three months apart in 1989, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, publisher of Rules of Prey, asked him to use a pseudonym. He chose the name Sandford after his great grandfather, who had fought in the Civil War.
