Monica Burns
Monica Burns is an accomplished journalist and author who has written extensively about the American criminal justice system. She has also been a vocal critic of the media’s coverage of criminal justice issues and has spoken out about the need for a more nuanced and accurate portrayal of crime in the United States.
Monica Burns was born in Boston in 1967. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1989 with a degree in political science and then attended the Columbia School of Journalism, where she earned her Master’s degree in 1995.
Burns began her journalism career as a staff writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, where she worked from 1995 to 1998. She then moved to Los Angeles, where she was a senior writer at the now-defunct Weekly World News.
Burns has authored several books about the American criminal justice system, including The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of the Great American Dust Bowl (2009), which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2015), which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
Burns has been a vocal critic of the media’s coverage of criminal justice issues and has spoken out about the need for a more nuanced and accurate portrayal of crime in the United States. She has also been a vocal supporter of the criminal justice reform movement and has testified on behalf of criminal justice reform bills in both the United States Congress and the United Kingdom House of Commons.