In the vein of Waiting for an Echo and Dead Man Walking, a deeply immersive look at justice in America, told through the interwoven lives of condemned prisoners and the men and women who come to visit them. In 2018, after nearly a decade's hiatus, the state of Tennessee began executing death row inmates, bucking national trends that showed the death penalty in decline. In less than two years, the state put seven men to death, more than any other state but Texas in that time period. It was an execution spree unlike any seen in Tennessee since the 1940s, one only brought to a halt by a global pandemic. In Death Row Welcomes You, Hale traces the lives of condemned prisoners at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution--and the people who come to visit them. What brought them--the visitors and convicted murderers alike--to death row?

            Steven Hale is an award-winning writer who worked for ten years as a staff reporter covering criminal justice and politics for the Nashville Scene. He has written extensively about Tennessee's death row, for which he won an Association of Alternative Newsmedia "Best Reporting" Award in 2020. His work has also appeared at The Appeal, The Daily Beast, and The Washington Post. He is currently a criminal defense investigator in Nashville, Tennessee, where he lives with his wife and two daughters.