James Lee Burke was born in Houston, Texas in 1936 and grew up on the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast. He attended Southwestern Louisiana Institute (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) and later received a B.A. Degree in English (1958) and an M.A. in English (1960) from the University of Missouri. Over the years, he worked as a land man for Sinclair Oil Company, pipe liner, land surveyor, newspaper reporter, college English professor, social worker on Skid Row in Los Angeles, clerk for the Louisiana Employment Service, and instructor in the U.S. Job Corps.

He and his wife Pearl met in graduate school and have been married for 48 years. They have four children.

Burke is an author best known for his Dave Robicheaux series of mystery novels. Two of Burke’s works were awarded the Edgar Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year by the Mystery Writers of America. He has also been a recipient of the Breadloaf fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Writing in Fiction (1988) and an NEA grant. Two of his novels, Heaven’s Prisoners and Two for Texas, have been made into motion pictures. His short stories have been published in two collections and in numerous magazines. Today he and his wife live in Missoula, Montana, and New Iberia, Louisiana.