Award-winning journalist Gwen Florio has covered stories ranging from the shooting at Columbine High School and the Oklahoma City bombing trials, to the glitz of the Miss America pageant and the more practical Miss Navajo contest, whose participants slaughter and cook a sheep. She’s reported from Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, as well as Lost Springs, Wyoming (population three). She turned to fiction in 2013 with the publication of her first novel, Montana, which won the Pinckley Prize for Debut Crime Fiction and a High Plains Book Award. Four more novels in the Lola Wicks crime series followed. Her most recent book is Silent Hearts, a novel of Afghanistan, published in 2018 by Atria. Florio is executive editor of the Missoulian.