Patrick Radden Keefe

Patrick Radden Keefe is an American author and staff writer at The New Yorker, widely considered one of the foremost practitioners of narrative nonfiction in the United States. His books combine deep investigative journalism with novelistic storytelling, typically focusing on crime, conflict, and the dark corners of American institutions. His book Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (2019) won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, among many other honors. Drawing on years of interviews and archival research, it examines a murder during the Troubles through the lens of the IRA and British intelligence. Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (2021) is an investigation into the family behind OxyContin and the opioid crisis, which became a number one New York Times bestseller. Keefe is a graduate of Columbia University, Cambridge University, and Yale Law School. He has written extensively for The New Yorker on topics ranging from drug trafficking to war crimes. His earlier books include The Snakehead (2009) and Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping (2005). His ability to bring both legal and narrative sophistication to complex stories has made him a dominant figure in American longform journalism. He lives in New York City with his family.