Marc Perrusquia

Marc Perrusquia is the director of the Institute for Public Service Reporting at the University of Memphis. He previously served as a journalist for The Commercial Appeal, the daily newspaper in Memphis, Tenn., where he worked for more than 29 years. He has won numerous national awards for both feature writing and investigative reporting, a specialty honed over three decades working in a city long considered among the nation’s most corrupt. His journalistic interests also include civil rights history, FBI surveillance and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., specialties he developed while covering dying assassin James Earl Ray’s unsuccessful attempts in 1997-98 to win a court-ordered release from prison, which led to the writing of this book. Raised in Wisconsin, he is a graduate of the University of Minnesota. He and his wife, Tina, a Memphis attorney, have three children.