For over forty years, bestselling author Alex Kotlowitz has told stories of perseverance and dignity in the face of poverty, racism, and violence. A common thread is the acutely empathetic lens he brings to on-the-ground reporting, starting with his breakout book, There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America through to his latest An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago. Recognized for his perceptive portrayals of poverty, race, and immigration that “illuminate astonishing national inequities through the lens of individual experience” (Academy of Arts and Letters), his work spans many forms of media: print and radio journalism, documentary film, and books.

A national bestseller, There Are No Children Here garnered national recognition for its compassionate, unflinching portrait of Pharoah and Lafeyette Rivers and their lives growing up in a public housing project. In unforgettable storytelling, Kotlowitz deploys what Tracy Kidder terms “a powerful argument against the politics of inertia, hopelessness, and greed, and for a real war on poverty, violence, and racism in our country.” The book has received many awards, including the Helen B. Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Carl Sandburg Award, and a Christopher Award. In 1993, There Are No Children Here was made into a television movie starring Oprah Winfrey. It continues to be taught at high schools, colleges, and universities across the nation, and was selected by the New York Public Library as one of the 150 most important books of the 20th century.

A generation later Kotlowitz returned to some of Chicago’s most turbulent neighborhoods in An American Summer. This “revelatory and brilliant” (Wes Moore) narrative collects intimate, deeply-textured profiles of individuals to investigate the toll of gun violence on people and communities. Among others, we meet a man who as a teenager killed a rival gang member and twenty years later is still trying to come to terms with what he’s done; a devoted school social worker struggling with her favorite student, who refuses to give evidence in the shooting death of his best friend; the witness to a wrongful police shooting who can’t shake what he has seen; and an aging former gang leader who builds a place of refuge for himself and his friends. In an interview with Vice, Kotlowitz explained, “I wanted to write a book that would, as intimately as I could, get at what the violence does in shaping who we are and how we come to think of ourselves. And to ask the questions that we ordinarily don’t ask.”

“A masterpiece of real-life storytelling. With each unforgettable story, Kotlowitz draws us into the lives of people living and working in some of Chicago’s most abandoned communities…. They dispel with cheap explanations, offering deeper sense to acts thought senseless and revealing people’s depth and humanity lost in the headlines.”

—Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Evicted

Kotlowitz previously examined the stubborn persistence of urban violence in his Emmy Award-winning documentary The Interrupters, a collaboration with Hoop Dreams director Steve James. It was praised by The New York Times’ A.O. Scott for its ability to “open up” the topic of urban violence and not limit the story to “the comforting clarity of easy conclusions.” The film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and appeared as a two-hour special on Frontline. The Interrupters was cited as one of the best films of the year by The New Yorker, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, and Entertainment Weekly, and received the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary. TIME called it “an enthralling experience… heroically life-affirming.”

The access that those on the margins have to justice is another theme that animates Kotlowitz’s work. The Other Side of the River: A Story of Two Towns, a Death and America’s Dilemma centers on the mysterious death of a Black teenager named Eric McGinnis in St. Joseph, Michigan, a primarily white town across the river from his home in the primarily Black town of Benton Harbor. A “vivid American microcosm, a telling tableau of the way we are… important, essential even, for the rest of us to contemplate” (The New York Times), its account of unhealed wounds and suspicions between the two communities functions as a “portrait of racially troubled America” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). In 2021, thirty years following McGinnis’s death, a new investigation was reopened, though the inequities between the two cities persist.

Kotlowitz is the creator of the podcast Written Inside, produced by WBEZ Chicago, which brings to life essays by men incarcerated at Stateville Correctional Center. After a visit to the maximum-security prison to lead a writing workshop, Kotlowitz was so taken by the stories of the men there that he ended up working with some of them on their pieces for nearly a year. NPR’s Laura Ober, who selected Written Inside as one of the top podcasts of 2017, praised it as “an intimate look at life behind bars that will likely change the way you think about incarceration.”

Kotlowitz’s work has regularly appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine and on This American Life (notably, the Peabody Award-winning “Harper High School” double episode). His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, and Granta.

Kotlowitz is professor emeritus of journalism at Northwestern University. He has also taught at the University of Notre Dame, the University of Chicago, and Dartmouth College, where he was a Montgomery Fellow. His work is widely read in programs focusing on social work, education, psychology, urban affairs, race, housing issues, and journalism. He has lectured at hundreds of organizations and universities, including Harvard, Princeton, and the Aspen Ideas Festival, and has keynoted for numerous conferences, including those of the Neighborhood Housing Services, the Federal Reserve, and the National Association of Social Workers. A graduate of Wesleyan University and recipient of eight honorary degrees, Kotlowitz grew up in New York City, now lives in Chicago, and is at work on a new book.

For more information on Alex Kotlowitz, please visit alexkotlowitz.com.