NICHOLAS SCHOU is a Los Angeles Times bestselling author. He is an award-winning investigative journalist with OC Weekly who has also written for LA Weekly, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Epidemic Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), and which has been optioned for a feature length film by Universal Studios and the Los Angeles Times bestselling Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). His latest book is The Weed Runners: Travels with the Outlaw Capitalists and Modern-Day Bootleggers of America’s Medical Marijuana Trade (Chicago Review Press 2013).

His reporting has resulted in the release from prison of wrongly convicted individuals and the federal indictment, conviction and imprisonment of a Huntington Beach mayor. Last year, Harper Collins included one of his feature stories in Best American Crime Reporting 2008; the same story also won the Best Feature Story award from Southern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. He teaches literary journalism each summer at the University of California, Irvine and lives with his wife and son in Long Beach, California.