John J. Lennon is a contributing editor for Esquire and a contributing writer for The Marshall Project. He is also a prisoner in his nineteenth year of incarceration, currently in Sullivan Correctional Facility. In 2013, he published his first essay in The Atlantic. To date, he has published feature essays in Esquire, New York Magazine, The New York Review of Books, Men’s Health, The Washington Post Magazine, and Sports Illustrated. In 2019, John was a finalist for the National Magazine Award in feature writing for his Esquire feature “This Place Is Crazy”; this same essay was later anthologized in the 2019’s Best American Magazine Writing. He was also a finalist for the Molly National Journalism Prize for “Spying on Attica” and “A Turbulent Mind,” which The Marshall Project published in collaboration with Vice and New York Magazine, respectively. In 2020, John’s story “The Apology Letter” appeared in The Washington Post Magazine’s special prison issue, which won a National Magazine Award for single topic publication.