Dave Jamieson's first paid gig in journalism was working as a stringer for the Daily Record in his native New Jersey, where he covered church groundbreakings, kindergarten parades, and charity casino night for senior citizens. After a brief stint as a magazine fact-checker, he left for Washington, D.C., and spent four years as a staff writer at the Washington City Paper, the capital's alternative weekly. Though he wrote mostly about goings-on at the D.C. courthouse, some of his favorites stories dealt with a sex-obsessed serial arsonist, jumbo-slice pizza, a late-night informercial pitchman, teenage burglars, and a regional sausage of mysterious origins.
Now a freelance writer based in Chicago, he's written for the Washington Post, Slate, The New Republic, The Big Money, and the Huffington Post Investigative Fund. His first book, Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession, was published in April 2010 by Atlantic Monthly Press. He has won the Livingston Award for Young Journalists and the Sidney Hillman Foundation's Sidney Award. He graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in English in 2001.