Douglas Preston

Preston began his career as an editor at the American Museum of Natural History, and he taught nonfiction writing at Princeton University. His eight-year stint at the Museum resulted in the nonfiction book, Dinosaurs in the Attic, edited by Lincoln Child. During this period, Preston gave Child a midnight tour of the museum, and in the darkened Hall of Late Dinosaurs, under a looming T. Rex, Child turned to Preston and said: “This would make the perfect setting for a thriller.” That thriller became Relic, made into a #1 box office hit movie by Paramount Pictures, and launched a long and fruitful collaboration, which introduced to the world Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast.

In 1986, Douglas Preston piled everything he owned into the back of a Subaru and moved from New York City to Santa Fe to write full time. Preston wrote Cities of Gold, a nonfiction book about Coronado's search for the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola. To research the book, Preston and photographer Walter W. Nelson retraced on horseback 1,000 miles of Coronado's route across the Southwest.

In addition to writing novels, Preston pursues a career in journalism, writing about archaeology for the New Yorker and National Geographic. Among his many journalistic adventures, he explored a 12th century temple buried in the Cambodian rainforest; he was the first to enter a burial chamber in a tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings; and he was on the first expedition to explore a lost city discovered in the Mosquitia jungles of Honduras. In 2010 Preston spent ten days with U.S. troops in Iraq, as part of the first USO author tour in a combat zone.

In the year 2000, Preston moved with his family to Florence, Italy. He became fascinated by the true story of a serial killer named the Monster of Florence. He teamed up with an Italian journalist, Mario Spezi, and in 2008 they published a nonfiction book, The Monster of Florence. Preston was also active in the Amanda Knox murder case and went on the Today Show, 48 Hours, Dateline NBC, and Megyn Kelly’s show on Fox, defending Amanda and explaining the Italian legal system. He wrote about the case in two short ebooks, Trial By Fury and The Forgotten Killer.

In 2014 Preston founded Authors United, to protest Amazon’s sanctioning of books in a commercial dispute with Hachette. He serves on the board of the Authors Guild. He sits on the advisory council of the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a member of the Long Rider’s Guild. In 2011, Pomona College conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa.