Terry Gould is an investigative journalist whose best-selling books and articles on organized crime and social issues have earned over 50 awards and honors from numerous foundations, including the Canadian Association of Journalists, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, Crime Writers of Canada, Writers Trust of Canada, Spain's Jose Maria Portell Press Freedom Foundation, National Magazine Awards, Jack Webster Foundation, Western Magazine Awards, and the Foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Letters.
Tributes to Gould's crime reporting include being chosen to give the keynote speeches at classified conferences of the Criminal Intelligence Service of Ontario, the Criminal Intelligence Service of Alberta, the Conference of Senior RCMP Officers, and the RCMP Officer of The Year Awards Ceremonies. Gould often teaches law enforcement officials on the science of recruiting and handling informants and intelligence gathering.
Gould's most recent book is Worth Dying For: Canada's Mission to Train Police in the World's Failing States (2014), winner of the $10,000 J. W. Dafoe Book Prize for the best nonfiction book on Canada, Canadians, and/or Canada's place in the world. Published on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the RCMP's first international police training mission, Worth Dying For is a brilliantly reported account of a year in the life of our "CivPol" contingents in Afghanistan, Palestine and Haiti. It is also an intimate portrait of the idealism and courage with which our police officers undertake this complicated and dangerous work, brought to us by the only journalist ever granted unfettered access to these missions.
Gould's previous book is the acclaimed Marked for Death: Dying for the Story in the World's Most Dangerous Places (2009), published in Canada as Murder Without Borders: Dying for the Story in the World's Most Dangerous Places. The book has won the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression 2009 Tara Singh Hayer Press Freedom Award, the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award for Best Non-fiction book of 2009, Spain's 2010 Jose Maria Portell Press Freedom Award, and was a finalist for the 2009 Writers Trust of Canada Award for Best Political Writing of the Year.
It is the first book to recount the inner lives of local journalists assassinated in the five most murderous countries for reporters. During four years of research, Gould visited the victims' hometowns to interview their colleagues, families, and--in some cases--their suspected killers. In Iraq, the Philippines, Russia, Colombia and Bangladesh he reveals the journalists' deeply personal motivations for risking certain death in the face of unbridled corruption and violence.
"Through his meticulous reporting and his compassionate storytelling, Gould performs a small miracle, a literary resurrection, allowing journalists so cruelly killed to tell their own stories completely and honestly."
-- Joel Simon, Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists
Gould's other books include Paper Fan: The Hunt for Triad Gangster Steven Wong, nominated for the 2005 Tara Singh Hayer International Press Freedom Award. Paper Fan tells the tale of the author's decade-long pursuit of a fugitive Chinese mobster through the organized crime circles of six countries.
Gould's exposés about Chinese organized crime led to his being put under police protection for six months.
"A heart-pounder... With this remarkable work, award-winning investigative journalist Terry Gould takes the reader on a madcap, pulse-quickening race across the far reaches of Asia.... This work is among the most provocative and well-written texts on Asian organized crime that I have read in years. Politics, history, culture, suspense and copious doses of good humor--Paper Fan has it all. It is a sophisticated education communicated as sheer, unadulterated entertainment."
-- The Globe and Mail: Staff Sgt. Chuck Konkel (Canada's expert on Triad crime)
Gould is the author of two other books, including the international bestseller, The Lifestyle: A Look at the Erotic Rites of Swingers (1999), which broke the story of the modern swinger subculture among millions of middle-class, otherwise conservatively married couples. Through his extensive research into the anthropology and sociobiology of spouse exchange, Gould broadened his discussion of clubs, conventions and holiday resorts to include deeply significant explanations for what takes place at them.
The Lifestyle reached No. 2 on Amazon.com's Movers and Shakers Bestseller List and was profiled on ABC's 20/20 and CBS's 48 Hours.
"Gould's approach is tasteful, and his book is one of the few descriptive works in print on consensual non-monogamy. It can serve researchers well. General readers will be riveted."
-- Library Journal of the American Library Association
Gould has been the subject of a Bravo! TV "Hearts and Minds" documentary and has appeared hundreds of times on national U.S. and Canadian television and radio to discuss his work, including ABC's "20/20," CBS's "48 Hours," and CBC's "The Hour," "Dispatches," "The Current" and "As It Happens." His work has been widely reviewed and discussed in virtually every city newspaper across the U.S. and Canada, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald, The Globe and Mail, and The National Post, as well as many major national magazines, including Playboy, Macleans, Toro, and Saturday Night.
Listed in Canadian Who's Who, Gould served as Contributing Editor at Canada's national magazine Saturday Night between 1993 and 2002. He is the former Story Editor and Programmer of CBC-TV's "Front Page Challenge," a docudrama script writer for CBC-TV, and the Senior Editor of both Vancouver magazine and V magazine. His docudrama script about Asian organized crime, Racing with Dragons, was sold to the CBC in 1991.
Terry Gould was born in 1949 in the rougher reaches of Brooklyn, N.Y. Between the ages of nine and 14, he was an A-list television and magazine model, appearing in numerous TV commercials that included Colgate's famed "Invisible Shield" series, and in magazines that included the New York Times Sunday Magazine. He supported himself driving taxi cab while attending Brooklyn College. In 1971, after his name wasn't called in the draft lottery, he moved to northern British Columbia, where he homesteaded 160 acres with his wife, built a 2,000 sq. ft. log home, and worked as a tree faller and brakeman on freights. In 1984 he published a collection of short stories, How the Blind Make Love, and then moved to Vancouver, where he began his award-winning career as a journalist.
Gould is a dual U.S./Canadian citizen, and lives in North Vancouver with his wife of 44 years. When he is not on overseas assignment, he is an avid mountain biker.
