Nate Blakeslee

Writer-at-large Nate Blakeslee is the author of the New York Times best-seller American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West. The book was a finalist for the 2018 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, was named Outside magazine’s best adventure book of the year, and won a Banff Mountain Book award. American Wolf was optioned by Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company and Warner Bros.

Blakeslee’s first book, Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town, was based on a story he broke in 2000 about a police corruption scandal in the Texas Panhandle. His original story for the Texas Observer was a finalist for a National Magazine Award and eventually resulted in a major reorganization of the state’s drug enforcement bureaucracy and the exoneration of some three dozen wrongfully convicted individuals.

Tulia was named a Notable Book of 2005 by the New York Times. It won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the Texas Institute of Letters prize and was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for first nonfiction. The Washington Post called it one of the most important books about wrongful convictions ever written. Tulia has been acquired by Paramount Pictures.

Blakeslee was the coeditor of the Texas Observer from 2000 to 2003 and a senior editor at Texas Monthly from 2006 to 2014. Born and raised in Arlington, Texas, he has a master’s degree in American studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He lives in Austin with his family.