Lon Wagner is a former journalist whose editors twice nominated his work for the Pulitzer Prize, including once for a fourteen-part series about the 1855 yellow fever epidemic. His other distinctions include multiple national feature writing awards, Virginia Press Association awards, and National Motorsports Writer of the Year. He graduated the University of Delaware with a degree in English and journalism and obtained a master's of science degree in applied linguistics from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He has three daughters and lives in Roanoke, Virginia, where he enjoys daily hikes in the Blue Ridge Mountains.