David Freed
David Freed is screenwriter, author of the Amazon- and Audible- best-selling, Cordell Logan mystery-thriller novels, and a former investigative journalist for The Los Angeles Times. He served as The Times' lead police reporter, was an individual finalist for the Pulitzer Prize’s Gold Medal for Public Service, the most prestigious award in American journalism, and shared in a Pulitzer Prize for the newspaper’s coverage of the 1992 Rodney King riots.
Freed reported from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, and later worked in the intelligence community for the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, among other federal agencies. An active instrument-rated pilot, he is a frequent contributor to national magazines, including Air & Space Smithsonian, where he is a contributing editor, and the Atlantic, where his story, “The Wrong Man,” was honored in 2011 as a finalist in feature writing by the American Society of Magazine Editors.
After graduating in 1976 from Colorado State University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Technical Journalism, Freed spent three years working for the Colorado Springs Sun, covering police and military affairs, before moving on to the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, where he spent another three years serving as a roving regional correspondent, investigative reporter, and on the Statehouse beat. He joined the staff of The Los Angeles Times in 1983.
After leaving The Times in 1995, Freed worked briefly as an investigator and associate field producer for the Los Angeles bureau of CBS News, helping cover the OJ Simpson trial, before selling a screenplay at auction to 20thCentury Fox. He subsequently spent 10 years writing feature-length films.
Since 2014, Freed has taught various courses as a special assistant professor within the Department of Journalism and Media Communication at Colorado State University, including Feature Writing, Magazine Writing, Screenwriting, Fact to Fiction, and News Literacy. In 2017, Freed was selected to the CSU Media Hall of Fame. In 2018, he was named the College of Liberal Arts’ Distinguished Alumnus.
Freed holds a Master of Liberal Arts degree in Extension Studies from Harvard University. He currently teaches creative writing at the Harvard Extension School.
He lives in Santa Barbara, California, with his wife, Elizabeth, a clinical psychologist. They have two adult children.
More about David https://david-freed.com/