Lon Wagner

Staff writer

Office phone: 757-446-2341

Lon Wagner is leader of a team of three writers who produce special narrative projects for The Virginian-Pilot.

Lon Wagner honed his persuasive ability at his first newspaper by having to talk his way into important meetings after explaining that he worked for The Whale. He left that Lewes, Del., weekly and wrote for three other newspapers before beaching himself at The Virginian-Pilot. He has been on the paper’s narrative team since its formation in 1998. He takes pleasure in writing about regular people and the grace with which they overcome daily struggles. He has had the privilege to twice go on assignments with his father, first when they traveled U.S. 58 from the Cumberland Gap to the Atlantic Ocean and recently when they took a week-long tour exploring Virginia’s bluegrass roots.

On assignments, Wagner has ridden 400 miles overnight with a long-haul trucker, stood with a man who has fried 20 million crabs, traveled with Phish fans from concert to concert, watched – and smelled -- a couple of guys clean up murder scenes. He has won several national feature writing awards and his series “Dead or Alive?” about a missing Gulf War pilot was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

A 1986 graduate of the University of Delaware, Wagner has a master’s in applied linguistics from Edinburgh University. He lives in Norfolk with his wife and two young daughters, the older of whom scribbles on paper and says she is “writing like Daddy.”