Stori willingham biography of michaels

American journalist and memoirist

Michael Finkel (born 1969) is a journalist and memoirist, who has written the books True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa (2005), The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit (2017), and The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession (2023) about Stéphane Breitwieser.

Career

Finkel was a writer for The New York Times until 2002, when he was discovered to have created a composite protagonist for a story on the Arab slave trade within Africa.^[1] The story published in 2001, titled "Is Youssouf Malé A Slave?" purported to profile an adolescent West African boy, Youssouf Malé, who had sold himself into slavery on a cocoa plantation in the Ivory Coast.

The story as published included photographs, including one described as being that of Malé. However, after publication, an official from Save the Children contacted Finkel to say that the boy pictured was not M