Cheryl L. Reed is working on a series of novels set in Chicago. Her first novel, Poison Girls, is a thriller set during a recent presidential election when more than 250 people have died of fentanyl-laced heroin, a crime that goes unnoticed until politically connected girls begin dying of the drug. The book was released in the fall of 2017 by Diversion Books in New York. Ms. Reed is finishing a second novel, also set in Chicago, that deals with the issue of gun violence.

Ms. Reed received her Master's of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing-Fiction from Northwestern University. She earned her master’s degree in journalism as a Kiplinger Fellow at The Ohio State University. She is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism where she received dual bachelor’s degrees in newswriting and photojournalism.

She is a former editorial page editor, columnist, books editor and investigative reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times and previously a staff writer at several others newspapers. Her stories have changed national and state laws and won numerous awards, including Harvard University’s Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting from the Kennedy School of Government, the Investigative Reporters & Editors Award for Investigative Reporting and the Edgar A. Poe Award by the White House Correspondents' Association.

Ms. Reed ran a medical magazine and served as a director of communications and publishing at the University of Chicago before deciding to teach and write full time. She has taught for various universities. Currently, Ms. Reed is an assistant professor of journalism at Syracuse University. She was a Fulbright Scholar teaching in Kyiv, Ukraine from 2016-2017. Ms. Reed spends much of her time interviewing investigative journalists in former Soviet countries. Her foreign reports have been published by the Washington Post, the Columbia Journalism Review and others.

Ms. Reed and her husband, Greg Stricharchuk, a writer and a former editor for the Chicago Tribune, live in Syracuse, New York.

For the most up-to-date news, visit the author's main website at cherylreed.com