Gary Cartwright was an acclaimed reporter, novelist, nonfiction author, and screenwriter. He received a B.A. in journalism and government from Texas Christian University in 1957 and served as a newspaper reporter in Texas for the next decade. Cartwright's first book, a football novel entitled The Hundred Yard War, was published in 1967. His work appeared in The Texas Observer, Esquire, Saturday Review, Rolling Stone, and especially Texas Monthly, a magazine with which he was associated from its inception. A collection of his Texas Monthly articles can be found in Confessions of a Washed-up Sportswriter, and his true-crime books Blood Will Tell and Dirty Dealing both began as articles for the magazine. He received many honors for his writing, including the Texas Institute of Letters's Stanley Walker Award and the Press Club of Dallas Katie Award. Cartwright passed away in 2017 at the age of eighty-two.