John Byrne Cooke's Biography

John Byrne Cooke is a Harvard graduate who has been writing about little-known events in American history for more than twenty-five years. His first novel, The Snowblind Moon (1985), was a featured alternate selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club. The Washington Post said of his second novel, South of the Border (1989), "Like Michener, Cooke is a historian in novelist's clothing, but he is not as long-winded and his sentences are more graceful."

Cooke's latest book, Reporting the War: Freedom of the Press from the American Revolution to the War on Terrorism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), his first book-length work of nonfiction, is receiving high praise. Joseph Albright, former war correspondent for Cox Newspapers, wrote that Reporting the War is "a definitive and compelling account of the evolving struggle between a free press and censorious officialdom." Publisher's Weekly said that Cooke "gives an excellent, incisive commentary on how freedom of the press in the U.S., from the time of the 13 colonies on, has played out in times of war. . . . A timely study, Cooke's history presents the fifth estate in all its conflicted glory."

Cooke is writer and creator of the documentary series "Outlaws and Lawmen," which premiered on the Discovery Channel in 1996. The Los Angeles Times called the series "grand, authoritative story telling, the rare documentary that preserves historical integrity while playing on the screen almost like an adventure film, thanks largely to a script by John Byrne Cooke."

He has written book reviews for the New York Times, Washington Post Book World, and the Los Angeles Times. He has been a member of the faculty of the Jackson Hole Writers Conference since its inception in 1992.

His speaking credits include the Southwest Writers Workshop, Colorado Library Association, Western Writers of America, Jackson Hole Writers Conference, Santa Fe Writers Conference, Western History Association, Austin Writers League, the Greater Dallas Writers Association / UTD Conference, and Mountains and Plains Booksellers, who described Cooke as "witty and wonderful-not to be missed!"