John Richard Hersey (June 17, 1914 – March 24, 1993) was a
Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer and journalist considered one of the earliest practitioners of the so-called
New Journalism, in which storytelling techniques of fiction are adapted to non-fiction reportage. Hersey's
account of the aftermath of the atomic bomb dropped on
Hiroshima, Japan, was adjudged the finest piece of American journalism of the 20th century by a 36-member panel associated with
New York University's journalism department.