Cole Coonce

"Cole Coonce" (born 1961) is an author and literary journalist. Coonce started writing for automotive and drag-racing magazines in the 1990s, with a series of "new journalism"-type features published by Super Stock & Drag Illustrated, Full Throttle News, Popular Hot Rodding, Gearhead, and Hot Rod Magazine. During that period, he penned the non-fiction novel "Infinity Over Zero," a history of the land speed record that is the only non-partisan account of how Andy Green and the Thrust SSC jet car broke the sound barrier while setting the only supersonic Land Speed Record.

The publication of "Infinity Over Zero" solidified Coonce's reputation as hot rodding's definitive gonzo-type journalist, as evidenced by the book review in AutoWeek asking the reader to "imagine Dennis Hopper from Apocalypse Now writing a history of the Land Speed Record."

In 2001, he was honored by the Goodguys Rod & Custom Association for "Outstanding Journalistic Vision." In 2004, he won the Los Angeles Press Club's Best Sport Feature Award for "VIVA LA NITRO!" a cover story in Los Angeles CityBeat that re-lived the sojourn of Chicano funny-car driver Tony Pedregon, as he won a professional drag racing points title. Coonce then abandoned drag-strip journalism and branched out into covering and critiquing the fields of pop culture and rock music, which lead to the publication of his second feature length book, "Come Down from the Hills and Make My Baby," which is billed as "a book to curl up on someone's sofa with a warm crack pipe and enjoy."

Recently, his byline has appeared in LA Weekly, Men's Journal, Bicycling, RAZOR and WIRED. In 2009 KeroseneBomb Publishing released his anthology of drag strip essays, Top Fuel Wormhole. in 2010, K-Bomb released a collection of his essays on modern culture, Sex & Travel &; Vestiges of Metallic Fragments; it also released Coonce's The Devil's Own Day, a literary non-fiction feature that explores the one degree of separation between Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel and the birth of the delta blues in Mississippi.