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Joshua Sharpe

Biography

Joshua Sharpe

Joshua Sharpe is a print and audio journalist and editor whose stories have helped free two innocent people from life in prison. He is a 2025 Type Media Center Fellow, a 2023–2024 Knight-Wallace Fellow, a Livingston Award winner, and a 2022 and 2023 Pulitzer Prize judge. A native of Waycross, Georgia, he lives in Detroit, Michigan.

Joshua Sharpe

Books by Joshua Sharpe

by Joshua Sharpe - Nonfiction, True Crime

In 1985, a white man walked into a South Georgia church and brutally murdered Harold and Thelma Swain, two pillars of the area’s Black community. The killer vanished into the night. For 15 years, the case remained unsolved. Then authorities zeroed in on Dennis Perry, a carpenter who grew up nearby. Convicted with devastatingly flawed evidence, Perry received a double life sentence. When award-winning journalist and South Georgia native Joshua Sharpe retraces the case, he discovers a winding path of corruption, devastating missteps and secrets. He eventually uncovers explosive evidence that helps prove Perry’s innocence. And he confronts a long-ignored suspect: an alleged white supremacist who had bragged about committing the murders. But the fight for the truth is not easily won.