Official Bio

John Copenhaver’s historical crime novel Dodging and Burning won the 2019 Macavity Award for Best First Mystery and garnered Anthony, Strand Critics, Barry, and Lambda Literary Award nominations. The Savage Kind, his second novel, won the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBTQ Mystery and was a finalist for Left Coast Crime’s Best Historical Mystery. He cohosts on the House of Mystery Radio Show, and he is a co-founder of Queer Crime Writers and an at-large board member of Mystery Writers of America. He is the six-time recipient of Artist Fellowships from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and for years, he wrote a crime fiction review column for Lambda Literary called “Blacklight.” He’s a Larry Neal awardee, and his work has appeared in CrimeReads, Electric Lit, The Gay and Lesbian Review, PANK, Washington Independent Review of Books, and others. He teaches fiction writing and literature at Virginia Commonwealth University and is a faculty mentor in the University of Nebraska’s Low-Residency MFA program. He grew up in the mountains of southwestern Virginia and lives in Richmond, VA, with his husband, artist Jeffery Paul (Herrity). His forthcoming third novel, Hall of Mirrors, is the sequel to The Savage Kind.

What Scooby-Doo Taught Me About My Ghosts

Writing for me is about chasing ghosts and peeling off masks. I have Hanna-Barbera to thank for that.

As a kid, I would dash home from school, grab a packet of Pop-Tarts and a bottle of Mountain Dew, and hurry to the living room as that all-too-familiar jingle announced my favorite show on TV—Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? I loved this show with such furor, such unadulterated pleasure. I loved it because Scooby and Shaggy were believers. They believed in the Creeper and the Snow Ghost, the Miner 49er and the Witchdoctor even though time and time again, the mask would be ripped off, and the gloriously paranormal would be reduced to some schmuck in a suit.

I wanted to believe in ghosts too.

My father died when I was eight, and I was left with only an outline of a man, a phantom. Out of that void burgeoned my desire to write. My early compulsion to tell stories sprung from a need to fill in his outline, to uncover who he was. Throughout adolescence and my twenties, I continued chasing his ghost. During this time I married a woman, began teaching high school English, and established a conventional straight existence. But the more I pursued him, the more I realized it wasn't my father I was hoping to booby-trap and unveil, but myself. Then, much like hapless Scooby and Shaggy, I ensnared my own ghost and ripped the mask off—I came out of the closet and started living and writing truer to myself.

Now, instead of ripping off goofy latex masks, I pursue my phantoms as psychological metaphors, removing layers of deception and misdirection to unveil the truth about my characters.