ALAN PRENDERGAST is an award-winning journalist whose stories about the justice system, historic crimes, high-security prisons, and "death by misadventure" have appeared in a wide range of magazines and anthologies, including The Best American Crime Reporting, The Best American Sports Writing and the true-crime anthology Seven Sins. He is the author of a book about the Richard Jahnke child abuse and parricide case, The Poison Tree (Open Road Media), and Gangbuster (Citadel Press), a narrative nonfiction account of the life and times of Philip Van Cise, the Denver district attorney who battled the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, when the KKK was in the process of taking political control of Colorado. 

A longtime staff writer for the Denver newsweekly Westword, Prendergast has also written for Rolling Stone, Outside, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Men's Journal, and other regional and national publications. He served as consultant and reporter for a CBS News one-hour documentary about the Columbine shootings that aired on 60 Minutes and was nominated for an Emmy for outstanding investigative journalism. His centenary account of the 1914 Ludlow Massacre won one of the country's most prestigious feature competitions, the Eugene S. Pulliam National Journalism Writing Award, and many of his  other works of archival reporting have received accolades as well.

A Denver native, Prendergast has a master's degree in journalism from Ohio State University, where he studied as a Kiplinger Fellow. He teaches journalism at Colorado College and has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, NPR, the BBC and numerous other television, radio, and podcast programs to discuss his work. 


 

Recent Appearances/Events