Please check out my novel, Haiti, Love and Murder … In the Season of Soup Joumou.

With an eye for detail, ear for idiom, and endless curiosity, I covered international, national and local news as a Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer for three decades, producing a steady stream of high-impact stories.

My articles have appeared in the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, the Miami Herald, the Los Angeles Times, Elle magazine and other national publications. I have been a commentator on NPR, a guest on CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and a moderator at the annual convention of Investigative Reporters and Editors.

Reporting from more than 30 countries, I have written extensively about war, diplomacy, natural disasters, popular culture, arts, entertainment, public health, immigration and America’s changing demography.

As the Inquirer’s Middle East bureau chief, I traveled the region for six years from a base in Jerusalem. I wrote about the Iraq War, Israel’s military withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza, the Second Intifada, efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the region’s customs and cultures.

As National Correspondent/New England bureau chief I covered the abortion-clinic shootings in Boston, the Oklahoma City bombing, the crash of TWA Flight 800 and general news across the region and eastern Canada.

Working for two years on projects about the Philadelphia Police Department, I co-authored two series about police manipulation of crime statistics and pervasive problems with the city's Rape Investigation Unit.

Both were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

Other honors I have received include:

• The Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting

• The Roy W. Howard Award for Public Service Reporting

• The James K. Batten Award for Coverage of the Iraq War

• The Silver Gavel Award of the American Bar Association

• The Heywood Broun Award for Excellence in Journalism

  “Remarkable investigative reporting and compelling, stylish writing are not mutually exclusive journalistic ideals. … Michael Matza proved that” with his series about a Massachusetts man on Florida’s death row.

  With “meticulous concern for details and spell-binding style” the series “demonstrated the power of modern journalism to peel back the surface facts and expose the human drama beneath, the humanity behind the headlines.”

  —from the citation for the National Journalism Award, Ball State University

I write independently now so hit me up @MichaelMatza1, or mpmatza@gmail.com.