George Pelecanos To Address Conference

George Pelecanos, the award-winning novelist and television writer and producer, will address the 19th Annual leadership 100 Conference at a Forum on Thursday, February 4, 2010. He will be presnted with the Archbishop Iakovos Leadership 100 Award for Excellence.

Pelecanos was born in Washington, D.C. in 1957.  He worked as a line cook, dishwasher, bartender, and woman’s shoe salesman before publishing his first novel in 1992.

He is the author of sixteen novels set in and around Washington, D.C.: A Firing Offense, Nick's Trip, Shoedog, Down By the River Where the Dead Men Go, The Big Blowdown, King Suckerman, The Sweet Forever, Shame the Devil, Right as Rain, Hell to Pay, Soul Circus, Hard Revolution, Drama City, The Night Gardener, The Turnaround, and The Way Home. 

Pelecanos has been the recipient of the Raymond Chandler award in Italy, the Falcon award in Japan, and the Grand Prix Du Roman Noir in France.  Hell to Pay and Soul Circus were awarded the 2003 and 2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes.  The Turnaround won the Hammett Prize for literary excellence in the field of crime writing.  His short fiction has appeared in Esquire and the collections Unusual Suspects, Best American Mystery Stories of 1997, Measures of Poison, Best American Mystery Stories of 2002, Men From Boys, and Murder at the Foul Line.  He served as editor on the collections D.C. Noir and D.C. Noir 2: The Classics, as well as The Best Mystery Stories of 2008.  He is an award-winning essayist who has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ, Sight and Sound, Uncut, Mojo, and numerous other publications.  Esquire magazine called him "the poet laureate of the D.C. crime world."  In Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King wrote that Pelecanos is “perhaps the greatest living American crime writer.”  

Most recently, Pelecanos was a producer, writer, and story editor for the acclaimed HBO dramatic series, The Wire, winner of the Peabody Award, the AFI Award, and the Edgar.  He was nominated for an Emmy for his writing on that show.  He is a writer and co-producer on the upcoming World War II miniseries The Pacific, produced by Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and HBO, and is currently at work on David Simon’s dramatic series Treme, produced for HBO.                       

Pelecanos lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife and three children.