Bill Dedman, author of Empty Mansions, will lead a book discussion at the Clark Chateau, 321 West Broadway.

Bill Dedman is a Pulitzer and Peabody award-winning investigative reporter, and author of the New York Times No. 1 bestselling biography Empty Mansions. He has worked in online news, video, newspapers, television, and magazines.

Bill stumbled onto the mystery of the reclusive heiress Huguette Clark and her father, the Gilded Age industrialist who founded Las Vegas. Bill’s series of reports on the Clarks was the most popular story ever on NBCNews.com, with more than 110 million page views. What began as a slideshow and feature story developed into an investigative series, a running daily competitive story, a full-length biography, and now is being developed as a Hollywood film or TV series.

He co-wrote with Huguette Clark’s cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., the biography Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune. The book debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times best seller list and was chosen among the best books of 2013 by critic Janet Maslin, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the readers at Goodreads. See more at emptymansionsbook.com.

Bill got his start in journalism at 16 as a copy boy at The Chattanooga Times. He attended, but did not graduate from, Washington University in St. Louis, where he wrote for the newspaper Student Life and worked part time at The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Bill has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe, and was the first director of computer-assisted reporting for The Associated Press. Bill has received national journalism awards for online reporting, creative use of interactive tools, deadline reporting, public service, and feature writing. He has taught advanced reporting part time at the University of Maryland, Northwestern University, Boston University, and Stony Brook University, and served for six years on the board of directors of Investigative Reporters and Editors.