Casey Cep, journalist and author, CaseyCep.com

Casey Cep is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she covers religion, literature, and American life. Her first book, Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, was an instant New York Times bestseller. Cep is currently at work on Quicksands, a book about the treasure galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha, the most valuable shipwreck ever salvaged, forthcoming from Knopf. She was also chosen by the surviving family members of Nelle Harper Lee to write the authorized biography of one of America's most beloved and most enigmatic authors; that biography will be published by HarperCollins. Together with her wife, Kathryn Schulz, she wrote a children's book, Black Cat Island: An Almost Entirely True Story, which will be published by Little, Brown Books. A proud graduate of the Talbot County Public Schools, Cep has an A.B. from Harvard College and an M.Phil. from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. She was born and raised on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where she still lives with her family.