Jon Jefferson

Last updated
Jon Jefferson
Born (1955-11-13) November 13, 1955 (age 68)
St. Joseph, Missouri, U.S.
Pen nameJefferson Bass
OccupationAuthor
Alma mater Birmingham–Southern College
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Website
www.jeffersonbass.com

Jon Jefferson (born November 13, 1955) is a contemporary American author and television documentary maker. [1] Jefferson has written ten novels in the Body Farm series under the pen name Jefferson Bass, in consultation with renowned forensic anthropologist William M. Bass, as well as two non-fiction books about Bass's life and forensic cases. [2]

Contents

Life

Born in St. Joseph, Missouri, Jefferson spent most of his youth in Guntersville, Alabama. As a high school senior, he was named a National Merit Scholar, a state winner in the National Council of Teachers of English writing contest, and a Presidential Scholar (one of two from Alabama). He won a scholarship to Birmingham-Southern College, where he majored in English, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He did graduate study in English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Prior to writing books, Jefferson worked as a staff science writer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; as an educator and administrator at Planned Parenthood of East Tennessee; as a freelance magazine and newspaper journalist; and as a television documentary writer/producer. [3] His writings have been published in The New York Times , Newsweek , USA Today and Popular Science , and have been broadcast on NPR. [4] His documentaries include programs for the A&E Network, The History Channel, and the Oxygen Network. He also wrote and directed for the National Geographic Channel a two-part documentary — Biography of a Corpse and Anatomy of a Corpse — about the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility, which is also widely known as the Body Farm. [5] During filming, Jefferson met the founder of the Body Farm, Bill Bass, who asked for Jefferson's assistance to write his memoir, which was published in 2003 under the title Death's Acre.

Since 2015, Jefferson and his wife have lived in Athens, Georgia. [6]

Jefferson Bass

The success of the memoir Death's Acre inspired Jon Jefferson to create a series of collaborative crime-fiction novels with Bass using the pen name Jefferson Bass. [7] In 2006, the pair published a debut novel, Carved in Bone, which reached # 25 on The New York Times Best Seller list. Every year thereafter, Jefferson Bass published another novel in the Body Farm series, including: Flesh and Bone, The Devil's Bones, Bones of Betrayal, The Bone Thief, The Bone Yard, The Inquisitor's Key and Cut to the Bone. [8] Based on accurate forensic science, the Body Farm series has helped to increase popular interest in forensic criminal investigations involving the remains of the human body. Jefferson's second nonfiction collaboration with Bass, Beyond the Body Farm, recounts additional cases Bass worked, including the deadly 1983 Benton fireworks disaster. [9]

Solo Fiction

Jefferson is also the author of the 2018 standalone novel Wave of Terror, a thriller in which terrorists attempt to weaponize a large geologic fault in the Canary Islands. By triggering a massive landslide on the island of La Palma, they hope to unleash an immense tsunami, powerful enough to devastate the entire eastern seaboard of the United States. [10]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patricia Cornwell</span> American crime writer (born 1956)

Patricia Cornwell is an American crime writer. She is known for her best-selling novels featuring medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, of which the first was inspired by a series of sensational murders in Richmond, Virginia, where most of the stories are set. The plots are notable for their emphasis on forensic science, which has influenced later TV treatments of police work. Cornwell has also initiated new research into the Jack the Ripper killings, incriminating the popular British artist Walter Sickert. Her books have sold more than 120 million copies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ridley Pearson</span> American author

Ridley Pearson is an American author of suspense, thriller and adventure books. Several of his books have appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list.

A body farm is a research facility where decomposition of humans and animals can be studied in a variety of settings. The initial facility was conceived by anthropologist William M. Bass in 1981 at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee, where Bass was interested in studying the decomposition of a human corpse from the time of death to the time of decay. The aim was to gain a better understanding of the decomposition process, permitting the development of techniques for extracting information such as the timing and circumstances of death from human remains. Body farm research is of particular interest in forensic anthropology and related disciplines, and has applications in the fields of law enforcement and forensic science. By placing the bodies outside to face the elements, researchers are able to get a better understanding of the decomposition process.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kathy Reichs</span> American writer and forensic anthropologist

Dr. Kathleen Joan Reichs (PhD) is an American crime writer, forensic anthropologist and academic. She is a professor emerita of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is well known for inspiring the television series Bones.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William M. Bass</span> American forensic anthropologist

William Marvin Bass III is an American forensic anthropologist, best known for his research on human osteology and human decomposition. He has also assisted federal, local, and non-U.S. authorities in the identification of human remains. He taught at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and founded the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility, the first such facility in the world. The facility is more popularly known as "The Body Farm", a name used by crime author Patricia Cornwell in a novel of the same name, which drew inspiration from Bass and his work. Bass has also described the body farm as "Death's Acre" – the title of the book on his life and career, co-written with journalist Jon Jefferson. Jefferson and Bass, under the pen name "Jefferson Bass", have also written several fictional works: Carved In Bone, Flesh and Bone, The Devil's Bones, Bones of Betrayal, The Bone Thief, The Bone Yard, The Inquisitor's Key, Cut To the Bone, and The Breaking Point. Though currently retired from teaching, Bass still plays an active research role in the university's forensic anthropology program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deborah Blum</span> American journalist (born 1954)

Deborah Leigh Blum is an American science journalist and the director of the Knight Science Journalism program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the author of several books, including The Poisoner's Handbook (2010) and The Poison Squad (2018), and has been a columnist for The New York Times and a blogger, via her blog titled Elemental, for Wired.

Gil Reavill is an American author, journalist and screenwriter whose work has appeared in a variety of media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Rollins</span> American veterinarian and novelist (born 1961)

James Paul Czajkowski, better known by his pen name of James Rollins, is an American veterinarian and writer of action-adventure/thriller, mystery, and techno-thriller novels who gave up his veterinary practice in Sacramento, California to be a full-time author. Rollins' experiences and expertise as an amateur spelunker and a certified scuba diver have provided content for some of his novels, which are often set in underground or underwater locations. Under the pen name James Clemens, he has also published fantasy novels, such as Wit'ch Fire, Wit'ch Storm, Wit'ch War, Wit'ch Gate, Wit'ch Star, Shadowfall (2005), and Hinterland (2006).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Craig Davidson</span> Canadian author

Craig Davidson is a Canadian author of short stories and novels, who has published work under both his name and the pen names Patrick Lestewka and Nick Cutter. His style has been compared to that of Chuck Palahniuk.

<i>The Body Farm</i> (novel) Novel by Patricia Cornwell

The Body Farm is a crime fiction novel by Patricia Cornwell. It is the fifth book in the Dr. Kay Scarpetta series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter May (writer)</span> Scottish writer (born 1951)

Peter May is a Scottish television screenwriter, novelist, and crime writer. He is the recipient of writing awards in Europe and America. The Blackhouse won the U.S. Barry Award for Crime Novel of the Year and the national literature award in France, the Cezam Prix Litteraire. The Lewis Man won the French daily newspaper Le Télégramme's 10,000-euro Grand Prix des Lecteurs. In 2014, Entry Island won both the Deanston's Scottish Crime Novel of the Year and the UK's ITV Crime Thriller Book Club Best Read of the Year Award. May's books have sold more than two million copies in the UK and several million internationally.

Simon Beckett is a British journalist and author. His books, in particular the crime series around forensic anthropologist Dr David Hunter, have sold 21 million copies worldwide, and have had particular success in Germany and Scandinavia.

John Lee Farris is an American novelist, screenwriter, and playwright who first achieved best-seller status at age twenty-three and is most famous as the author of The Fury. He is also known largely for his work in the southern Gothic genre.

The University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility, better known as the Body Farm and sometimes seen as the Forensic Anthropology Facility, was conceived in 1971 and established in 1972 by anthropologist William M. Bass as the first facility for the study of decomposition of human remains. It is located a few miles from downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, behind the University of Tennessee Medical Center, and is part of the Forensic Anthropology Center, which was established by Dr. Bass in 1987.

Arpad Alexander Vass is a forensic anthropologist. He has researched the processes involved in human decomposition. Vass claims to have developed several devices and methods to locate human remains; however, those claims have not been validated by other experts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HP Newquist</span> American author

HP Newquist is an American author whose books cover topics from medicine and music to technology and terror. He is also a museum curator and musician, and has worked as a columnist, publisher, industry analyst, and video director.

The Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State (FACTS) is a 26-acre forensic anthropology research facility located on the Freeman Ranch in San Marcos, Texas. It is one of the seven extant body farms in the United States and the largest such forensics research facility in the world.

<i>Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition</i>

Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition is a book by Owen Beattie and John Geiger, first published in 1987 by Bloomsbury Publishing. The book focuses on the dramatic events surrounding the Franklin Expedition of 1845-1848, led by Sir John Franklin, as well as the scientific work and forensic testing on the bodies of three perfectly preserved Victorian seamen 138 years after their deaths, solving the mysteries of the Franklin Expedition. In 2004, the authors substantially revised the book, adding an epilogue and altering and updating the text. Margaret Atwood wrote an introduction. In 2017, the authors added a new afterword to the Canadian edition, and a new foreword by Wade Davis was added.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Madeleine Roux</span> American writer

Madeleine Roux is an American fiction author. She has written several young adult paranormal and horror fiction series, including the Asylum series. She has also written two standalone adult science fiction novels along with several novels for licensed properties such as World of Warcraft and Dungeons & Dragons.

References

  1. ↑ "Jon Jefferson | Penguin Random House". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved 2022-03-13.
  2. ↑ Jaffe, Elisa (May 17, 2011). "Novelist and researcher of the dead: 'This is real life'". KOMO.
  3. ↑ "Jon Jefferson". Marts & Lundy. Retrieved 2022-03-13.
  4. ↑ "Visiting Authors - 2011 Festival of Reading". Archived from the original on 2017-07-29. Retrieved 2012-01-11.
  5. ↑ "Death's Acre: the Film — Profile of Dr. Bill Bass, founder of The Body Farm — Crime Library".
  6. ↑ https://www.audible.com/author/Jon-Jefferson/B0749C55K6.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  7. ↑ "Author Magazine - An Interview with Jefferson Bass". Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2012-01-20.
  8. ↑ "Jefferson Bass - The Official Website". Archived from the original on January 18, 2012.
  9. ↑ William M. Bass, Jon Jefferson (2007). Beyond the Body Farm- Beyond the Body Farm: A Legendary Bone Detective Explores Murders, Mysteries, and the Revolution in Forensic Science .
  10. ↑ "Body Farm co-author Jon Jefferson raises stakes with new thriller 'Wave of Terror'". Knoxville News Sentinel. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.