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Keri Blakinger

Biography

Keri Blakinger

Keri Blakinger is a reporter who covers criminal justice and injustice. She is currently on staff at the Los Angeles Times and has previously worked for The Marshall Project and the Houston Chronicle. Her writing has appeared everywhere from the New York Daily News to the BBC and from VICE to The New York Times. She was a member of the Chronicle's Pulitzer-finalist team in 2018, and her 2019 coverage of women's jails for The Washington Post Magazine helped earn a National Magazine Award. Before becoming a reporter, she did prison time for a drug crime in New York.

Keri Blakinger

Books by Keri Blakinger

by Keri Blakinger - Memoir, Nonfiction

Growing up, Keri Blakinger threw herself into competitive figure skating with an all-consuming passion that led her to nationals. But when her skating career suddenly fell apart, that meant diving into self-destruction with the intensity she once saved for the ice. For the next nine years, Keri ricocheted from one dark place to the next. Then, on a cold day during her senior year, the police caught her walking down the street with a Tupperware full of heroin. Her arrest made the front page of the local news and landed her behind bars for nearly two years. After she walked out of her cell for the last time, Keri became a reporter dedicated to exposing our flawed prisons as only an insider could.