John Roswell Camp

John Sandford is the pseudonym of John Roswell Camp, an American author and journalist. Camp won the Pulitzer Prize in journalism in 1986, and was one of four finalists for the prize in 1980. He also was the winner of the Distinguished Writing Award of the American Society of Newspaper Editors for 1985.

Camp is the author of 35 published novels, all of which have appeared, in one format or another, on the New York Times Best-Seller lists.

He is also the author of two non-fiction books, one on art ("The Eye and the Heart: The Watercolors of John Stuart Ingle") and one on plastic surgery ("Plastic Surgery: the Kindest Cut"). His books have been translated into most European languages, as well as Japanese and Korean.

He is the principal financial backer of the Beth-Shean Valley Archaeological Project in the Jordan River Valley of Israel. A major show of the expedition's findings will be held at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in 2015.

Camp's journalism career began as an Army reporter (he is included in the 'Hall of Fame' at the Defense Information School at Fort Meade, Md.) After getting out of the Army, he then worked as a reporter for the Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Southeast Missourian for a year, covering such stories as the Cairo, Ill, race riots. He was a reporter and an editor at The Miami Herald from 1971-1978, and a reporter and columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press from 1978-1990. He continues to do occasional journalism, and was embedded with the 2-147 Air Assault Battalion during the Iraq War, and covered the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

In addition to archaeology, he is deeply interested in art (painting) and photography. He occasionally writes online articles on both. He enjoys reading history. He is interested in a number of outdoor sports, including hunting and fishing, canoeing, and skiing. He has, on occasion, both sailed and SCUBA-dived.