Bryan Gilmer has been a professional writer since 1994. He worked as a newspaper reporter for nine years, five at Florida's largest newspaper, the Pulitzer Prize-winning St. Petersburg Times.

His investigative reporting there shut down dangerous Alzheimer's care homes, exposed a former amusement park worker posing as a real estate developer and revealed that two women had staged an empty-casket funeral for a man who didn’t exist.

In the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election, Bryan and colleagues first told the nation that uncounted overseas ballots wouldn’t let Al Gore defeat George W. Bush.

Previously, Bryan was night police reporter at The Greenville News in South Carolina, where he covered scores of homicides, plane crashes, bank robberies and fatal car wrecks.

Bryan also writes fiction. He has just completed a crime thriller novel, Felonious Jazz, about a disturbed musician committing the perfect jazz album of burglaries and killings in suburban Raleigh, North Carolina.

Bryan has a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. He teaches newswriting at The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and has lectured at the Poynter Institute for media studies, Clemson University, The University of South Florida and Stetson University Law School and has appeared on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." He lives with his wife, Kelly, and their son, Quinn, in Durham, N.C., and volunteers as the president of Genesis Home, a non-profit that houses homeless families with children.