Storytellers

Justin Catanoso of Greensboro is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated business journalist, a university lecturer, and the author of the new book My Cousin the Saint: A Search for Faith, Family, and Miracles (William Morrow). The story is part biography, part memoir and the title is quite literal: Padre Gaetano Catanoso, a contemporary of the author's grandfather, was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in October 2005. Catanoso is now director of journalism at Wake Forest University, where he had taught reporting and editing classes on a part-time basis since 1993. From 1998 until last month, Catanoso served as executive editor of The Business Journal, a weekly based in the Triad. In 1992, his pioneering investigative reporting for the Greensboro News & Record into fraud in the tobacco industry earned a Pulitzer Prize nomination and a Science-in-Society Award from the National Association of Science Writers.He has been a visiting lecturer in journalism at Wake Forest University since 1993, where he teaches reporting and editing. Catanoso's work has also appeared in the New York Times, Catholic Digest, Washington Monthly, Denver Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, and on National Public Radio and WUNC's The State of Things. He is married to singer and songwriter Laurelyn Dossett, co-founder of the roots music band Polecat Creek and composer and musical director of three plays at Triad Stage in Greensboro, including the recent hit Bloody Blackbeard. They have three daughters: Emilia, Rosalie and Sophia. For information about My Cousin the Saint, please visit: www.justincatanoso.com