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The official website of the City of Mansfield, Texas

MANSFIELD READS "ONE CITY ONE BOOK"

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tim Madigan
Tim Madigan

Tim Madigan wrote his first book in 1968 when he was 11 years old. Every week in the autumn of that year, he scribbled down his account of the latest University of Minnesota football game in a notebook. Sales were modest.

But a love of books, words and writing never released him, leading from his small-town Minnesota upbringing to a career writing newspaper stories and eventually books that were more formally published and found slightly larger audiences. After college at the University of North Dakota, Tim worked as a sportswriter at a small paper in that state. Then came the cop beat in Odessa, Texas, and feature writing at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. By the mid-1990s, Tim had become one of the most decorated newspaper reporters in recent Texas history (three times named the state's top reporter), while writing about everything from sick children, to serial killers, cowboy poets, to his own experiences as a husband and father.

His first book, See No Evil: Blind Devotion and Bloodshed in David Koresh's Holy War was published in 1993, followed eight years later by The Burning: Massacre, Destruction and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. In its review, the New York Times called The Burning "A powerful book, a harrowing case study made all the more so by Madigan's skillful, clear-eyed telling of it." Madigan's most recent book, I'm Proud of You. My Friendship With Fred Rogers, reveals his life-altering friendship with Fred Rogers, which began in 1995 when he profiled the children's icon for the Star-Telegram. Fred was one of the first readers of Tim's first novel, which will be published soon.

When not writing books or newspaper stories, Tim enjoys spending time with his wife, Catherine, being a dad, playing the guitar, and backpacking in the Canadian Rockies. He is also the head coach for the Mansfield Hockey Association varsity team, made up of players from the city's four high schools.

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