Sam Quinones is a journalist, storyteller, former LA Times reporter, and author of three acclaimed books of narrative nonfiction.

His career as a journalist has spanned over 30 years. He lived for 10 years as a freelance writer in Mexico, where he wrote his first two books. In 2004, he returned to the United States to work for the L.A. Times, covering immigration, drug trafficking, neighborhood stories, and gangs.

In 2014, he resigned from the paper to return to freelancing, working for National Geographic, Pacific Standard Magazine, the New York Times, Los Angeles Magazine, and other publications.

Columbia Journalism School selected him as a 2008 recipient of the Maria Moors Cabot prize, for a career of excellence in covering Latin America. He is also a 1998 recipient of an Alicia Patterson Fellowship, one of the most prestigious fellowships given to print journalists.

His cult classic, "True Tales From Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino and the Bronx" are nonfiction stories about people on the margins of contemporary Mexico – drag queens, Oaxacan Indian basketball players, valientes, gang members, and popsicle vendors. His second book of non-fiction stories, "Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration" tell of the lives of Tijuana opera stars, velvet painters, soccer players in southwest Kansas, narco-Mennonites, immigrants who return to run for mayor, a town southeast of L.A., and a young construction worker bent on finding a new way for himself. His 2015 book, "Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic" by Bloomsbury Press, won the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award.

He has lectured at more than 50 universities across the United States.

Quinones is now a freelance journalist. He and his family live in Southern California.

Journalism, Authors, Storytelling, Immigration, News Reporting, Media Professionals, Latin America, Non-Fiction Authors, Print Media, Political Journalism, Award-Winning Author, Alcohol & Drug Abuse, Opioid Epidemic Hispanic Heritage, Hispanic Heritage Month,