This is a website for Johnny Dwyer, writer, author and teacher.

A little bit about me.

I’m a writer, reporter and teacher. I spend most of my time working on books. I wrote my first one about Liberia and a historic federal prosecution in Miami. And another about the federal courts in New York City.

I’ve also written for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Propublica, The Daily Beast and others. I also contributed a bit to The Intercept where I covered the murder of Marie Colvin, a novel lawsuit targeting the Alt-Right and left wing groups in Charlottesville, the failed recruitment and prosecution of a man accused of being an Iranian spy, and a few other things. I also teach at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Institute of Journalism in the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program.

A story that’s never left me is this piece about a Marine unit accused of unlawful battlefield killings. I adapted it into a feature-length screenplay. The genesis of that story is a piece about treating the combat wounded in Iraq. (That’s where I met some of the Marines eventually implicated in that case.) This is a story about a motel in Queens that houses refugees on their first night in America. Those are some of my favorites. But, there are a few more here.

I just finished my next book — a novel — but if you need to reach the folks who can answer literary rights questions contact Eric Lupfer at UTA.

If you’re still reading this — and wondering about the image above. It’s reasonable to see it as dark and foreboding. But that horizon, shot by the wonderful Glenna Gordon atop the abandoned Ducor Hotel in Monrovia, Liberia, never struck me that way.

Books

American Warlord is the incredible true story of Chucky Taylor, the only American ever convicted of torture. Chucky Taylor was an average American teenager, until he got a call from his father, a man who would become the infamous dictator of Liberia. Arriving in West Africa and reunited with his father, Chucky soon found himself leading a murderous militia group tasked with carrying out the president’s vendettas. Young and drunk on power, and with no real training beyond watching action films, Chucky spiraled into a binge of drugs, violence, and women, committing crimes that stunned even his father.

The Districts examines the New York crimes seen in the news, in movies, and on television—drug trafficking, organized crime, terrorism, corruption, and white-collar crime—while weaving in the nuances that rarely make it into headlines. The Rosenbergs, Rudy Giuliani, Bernie Madoff, James Comey, John Gotti, Preet Bharara, and El Chapo are just a few of the figures to have appeared before the courts in the Southern and Eastern District of New York—the two federal courts tasked with maintaining order in New York City. These two epicenters of power in our justice system have become proving grounds for ambitious prosecutors who turn their service in government into power, position, and, in some cases, celebrity. These attorneys don’t hope for victory in court; they expect it.