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Sarah Weinman

Biography

Sarah Weinman

Sarah Weinman is the author of SCOUNDREL and THE REAL LOLITA, and the editor of UNSPEAKABLE ACTS: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit & Obsession and EVIDENCE OF THINGS SEEN: True Crime in an Era of Reckoning. She was a 2020 National Magazine Award finalist for reporting and a Calderwood Journalism Fellow at MacDowell, and her work has appeared in New York magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair and the Washington Post. Weinman writes the crime column for the New York Times Book Review, and she lives in New York City and Northampton, MA.

Sarah Weinman

Books by Sarah Weinman

edited by Sarah Weinman - Nonfiction, Social Sciences, True Crime

True crime, as an entertainment genre, has always prioritized clear narrative arcs: victims wronged, police detectives in pursuit, suspects apprehended, justice delivered. But what stories have been ignored? In EVIDENCE OF THINGS SEEN, 14 of the most innovative crime writers working today cast a light on the cases that give crucial insight into our society. Wesley Lowery writes about a lynching left unsolved for decades by an indifferent police force and a family’s quest for answers. Justine van der Leun reports on the thousands of women in prison for defending themselves from abuse. May Jeong reveals how the Atlanta spa shootings tell a story of America. This anthology pulls back the curtain on how crime itself is a by-product of America’s systemic harms and inequalities.

by Sarah Weinman - Nonfiction, True Crime

In the 1960s, Edgar Smith, in prison and sentenced to death for the murder of teenager Victoria Zielinski, struck up a correspondence with William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review. Buckley, who refused to believe that a man who supported the neoconservative movement could have committed such a heinous crime, began to advocate not only for Smith’s life to be spared but also for his sentence to be overturned. So begins a bizarre and tragic tale of mid-century America. Sarah Weinman’s SCOUNDREL leads us through the twists of fate and fortune that brought Smith to freedom, book deals, fame...and eventually to attempting murder again.

by Sarah Weinman - Anthology, Nonfiction, True Crime

Sarah Weinman --- the acclaimed author of THE REAL LOLITA, and editor of WOMEN CRIME WRITERS and TROUBLED DAUGHTERS, TWISTED WIVES --- brings together an exemplary collection of recent true-crime tales. She culls together some of the most refreshing and exciting contemporary journalists and chroniclers of crime working today. There are 13 pieces in all, and as a collection, they showcase writing about true crime across the broadest possible spectrum, while also reflecting what makes crime stories so transfixing and irresistible to the modern reader.

by Sarah Weinman - History, Nonfiction, True Crime

Vladimir Nabokov’s LOLITA is one of the most beloved and notorious novels of all time. And yet, very few of its readers know that the subject of the book was inspired by a real-life case: the 1948 abduction of 11-year-old Sally Horner. Weaving together suspenseful crime narrative, cultural and social history, and literary investigation, THE REAL LOLITA tells Sally Horner’s full story for the very first time. Drawing upon extensive investigations, legal documents, public records and interviews with remaining relatives, Sarah Weinman uncovers how much Nabokov knew of the Sally Horner case and the efforts he took to disguise that knowledge during the process of writing and publishing LOLITA.