Martin Preib is a Chicago writer and cop. His first book, The Wagon and Other Stories from the City, was published by the University of Chicago Press. His essays have been published in Playboy, Virginia Quarterly Review (winner of the 2005 Staige D. Blackford Award for Nonfiction), New City, and Tin House.
In 2006, he began investigating wrongful conviction cases in Chicago and determined that many of these exonerations were false. His work led to undermining the most influential wrongful conviction case in the state’s history, chronicled in his second book Crooked City. In 2016, he was elected Second Vice President of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police.