Tonight: NPC Book Rap to feature `House of Cards’ screenwriter

An executive producer and screenwriter for the Netflix series ‘House of Cards’, John Mankiewicz, plans to join Laura Caldwell and Jerry Miller at a National Press Club Book Rap on Monday, May 1, at 6:30 p.m. in the Club’s conference rooms to discuss Anatomy of Innocence: Testimonies of the Wrongfully Convicted.

The Book Rap features a discussion with the principals, an audience question-and-answer session, and a book signing. Tickets are $5 for Club members and $10 for the public. To purchase tickets and copies of the book, please click here.

Books will also be available for purchase at the event; no outside books or memorabilia are permitted. Proceeds from this event benefit the non-profit affiliate of the Club, the National Press Club Journalism Institute, which offers innovative, practical training to journalists and communications professionals working in a rapidly-changing media environment.

The book is a brainchild of Caldwell, a mystery author and founder of Life After Innocence, an organization that provides services to exonerees. The idea was sparked by the thriller community's desire to help the erroneously incarcerated, she said.

The anthology pairs acclaimed authors with men and women who spent years in prison for crimes they did not commit.

Miller's story was paired with Mankiewicz, and their chapter discusses Miller's experience of spending more than 25 years behind bars for kidnapping, rape and robbery, only to be found to have been wrongly convicted. DNA evidence established that it was another man who was responsible for the crime. Miller received a pardon from the governor and became the 200th person in the United States exonerated through DNA evidence.

Caldwell is the bestselling author of 15 books, including the award-winning Izzy McNeil series, the first of which is Red Hot Lies, and the nonfiction work Long Way Home: A Young Man Lost in the System and the Two Women Who Found Him. Her research for the latter book motivated her to launch Life After Innocence at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, where she continues to serve as its director. She is the co-editor of Anatomy of Innocence: Testimonies of the Wrongfully Convicted.

Mankiewicz is a film and television writer whose credits include “The Street”, “The Human Factor” and “The Marshal”. He is an executive producer of the D.C.-set Netflix series “House of Cards”.