“Truth has become the casualty of our addiction to agendas and opinions and rapid-fire tweets.” - Stephen Jimenez
Over the past two decades, Stephen Jimenez has spent extended periods of time in Wyoming researching, reporting, and writing about the Matthew Shepard tragedy. For his reporting on the case he won the Writers Guild of America Award and the Mongerson Award for Investigative Reporting from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He is the author of The Book of Matt: The Real Story of the Murder of Matthew Shepard.
As a gay man Jimenez felt an added moral imperative to tell the story of Matthew’s murder honestly, and his reporting has been thoroughly corroborated.
Kirkus Reviews praised The Book of Matt as “fearless, frank and compelling. Investigative journalism at its relentless and compassionate best.”
Lambda Literary Review called it “a model for journalistic inquiry.”
A new edition of Steve’s The Book of Matt: The Real Story of the Murder of Matthew Shepard, has just been released with a new conclusion by the author.
Former editor of The New Republic, Andrew Sullivan, wrote in a new introduction to the book that the "horror could help advance the argument for gay equality in a period when it was very much in the headlines and the Congress. It was a time when marriage equality was in the news, and when 'Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell' was the military’s policy toward gay service members. The message was particularly useful for gay rights groups like the Human Rights Campaign, whose fundraising sky-rocketed in the wake of the shocking murder.”
The death of Matthew Sheppard rallied a country into seeking more laws to protect gay and lesbian people.
Stephen Jimenez lives in New Mexico but is Vice President of the Ucross Foundation outside of Sheridan, Wyoming. He wrote portion of the book while there in residency.
