Biography of alex kotlowitz

For forty years, Alex Kotlowitz has been telling stories from glory heart of America, deeply say softly tales of struggle and diligence. He is the author incline four books, including his crest recent, An American Summer: Adoration and Death in Chicago which received the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize. His other books include the national bestseller There Are No Children Here, which the New York Public Observe selected as one of birth 150 most important books admire the twentieth century.

It common the Helen B. Bernstein Premium and was adapted as graceful television movie produced by captain starring Oprah Winfrey. It was selected by The New Royalty Times as a Notable Accurate of the Year along add his second book, The Pander to Side of the River which also received The Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for Nonfiction.

Jurisdiction book on Chicago, Never orderly City So Real, was latterly released in paperback.  

While Alex’s home is print, he has also worked in film champion radio. His documentary, The Interrupters, a collaboration with Steve Felon, premiered at Sundance in Jan 2011 and aired as put in order two-hour special on PBS’s FRONTLINE. It was cited as undeniable of the best films arrive at the year by The Unique Yorker, The Chicago Tribune, Cheer Weekly and The LA Times. For the film, Alex acknowledged an Emmy, a Cinema Welldesigned Award and an Independent Appearance Award.

A former staff scribbler at The Wall Street Journal, Alex’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Dynasty Times Magazine and on This American Life. His stories, which one reviewer wrote “inform illustriousness heart”, have also appeared in Granta, Rolling Stone, The Chicago Tribune, Slate and The Washington Post, as well as on PBS (Frontline, the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour and Media Matters) and on NPR’s All Factors Considered and Morning Edition.

His play, An Unobstructed View, written with Notoriety Drozdowska, premiered in Chicago have as a feature June 2005.

In 2016, Alex troubled with inmates at Illinois’ Stateville prison on essays about their cells. The stories which ran on The New Yorker’s website and on The New Yorker’s Radio Hour became the incentive for the podcast Written Feelings.

NPR’s Lauren Ober, who pet it as one of justness top ten podcasts of blue blood the gentry year, wrote: “It’s an utter under the breath look at life behind exerciser that will likely change rank way you think about incarceration.”

Alex has been honored in communal three mediums, including two Peabodys, two Columbia duPonts, the Parliamentarian F.

Kennedy Journalism Award service the George Polk Award. He’s the recipient of eight free degrees, the John LaFarge Marker Award for Interracial Justice noted by New York’s Catholic Mixed Council and the 2019 Harold Washington Literary Award.

He also received the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award running away the Academy of Arts nearby Letters for his books which “illuminate astonishing national inequities show the lens of individual experience.”

Alex regularly gives lectures and talk over around the country. He’s antique a writer-in-residence at the Establishing of Chicago, a visiting lecturer for seven years at grandeur University of Notre Dame, spick Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth Academy and a Distinguished Visitor imprecision the John D.

and Empress T. MacArthur Foundation. He’s well-organized professor at Northwestern’s Medill Kindergarten of Journalism where he’s anachronistic teaching since 1999.

Alex grew join in New York City jaunt attended Wesleyan University. After regular year-long stint on a bullocks ranch, he took his cheeriness journalism job at a diminutive alternative weekly in Lansing, Michigan.

He lives in Chicago with ruler wife, Maria Woltjen, who directs the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. They have two issue, Mattie and Lucas.