John Sandford

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 thirty-one 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 plastic surgery and one on art. His books have been translated into most European languages, as well as Japanese and Korean. He is the principal sponsor of a major archaeological dig in Israel, and is on the board of directors of the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research. Camp was born February 23, 1944, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He attended Cedar Rapids Catholic and public schools, graduating from Washington Senior High School in 1962. He received a bachelor's degree in American Studies in 1966, and a master's degree in journalism in 1971, both from the University of Iowa. Camp was married to Susan Lee Jones in 1966, and has two children, Roswell Camp and Emily Curtis, and three grandchildren, Benjamin, Daniel and Gabriel Curtis. His wife, Susan, died of metastasized breast cancer in May, 2007, and is greatly missed. After graduating from the University of Iowa in 1966, Camp spent two years in the U.S. Army, during which he served in Korea. He then worked as a reporter for the Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Southeast Missourian for a year, returning to University of Iowa in 1970 for his master's degree. 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.

He is the principal financial backer of the Beth-Shean Valley Archaeological Project in the Jordan River Valley of Israel, with a website at www.rehov.org In addition to archaeology, he is deeply interested in art (painting) and photography; he occasionally writes on-line 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. In 2010, he was thrown from a horse in the hills above Hollywood, CA, and spent three months limping around and cursing horses. He is a golfer. Until 2012 he lived in Lakeland Shores, east of Saint Paul, in Minnesota, spending the winters in Pasadena, California. He recently sold the Lakeland Shores home and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico.