John Copenhaver is an award-winning author whose latest novel, Hall of Mirrors, was selected as a New York Times Crime Novel of the Year and recently won the Left Coast Crime Award for Best Historical Mystery. His debut, Dodging and Burning, won the 2019 Macavity Award for Best First Mystery, and The Savage Kind earned the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBTQ Mystery. He is co-editor of Crime Ink: Iconic: An Anthology of Crime Fiction Inspired by Queer Icons.
A passionate advocate for queer voices, Copenhaver is a founding member of Queer Crime Writers and serves as a board member of International Thriller Writers. He is a six-time recipient of Artist Fellowships from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities and a Larry Neal Awardee. His work has appeared in CrimeReads, Electric Lit, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Glitterwolf, PANK, Washington Independent Review of Books, Writer’s Digest, and other publications.
A lifelong educator, he mentors aspiring writers in the Low-Residency MFA program at the University of Nebraska Omaha and teaches creative writing and literature at VCU. Originally from the mountains of southwestern Virginia, he now lives in Richmond, Virginia, with his husband, cermanist, Jeffery Paul Herrity.
