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Franklin D. Schurz Library

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One Book, One Campus 2009-2010


About Alex Kotlowitz

From Author's Offical Web Site:

"Alex Kotlowitz is perhaps best known for the bestselling There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America. The book, which was published in 1991 and has since sold over half-a-million copies, was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Helen B. Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Carl Sandburg Award and a Christopher Award. The New York Public Library selected There Are No Children Here as one of the 150 most important books of the century. In the fall of 1993, it was adapted for television as an ABC Movie-of-the-Week starring Oprah Winfrey.

About Kotlowitz’s second book [set in Benton Harbor], The Other Side of the River: A Story of Two Towns, a Death and America’s Dilemma, The New York Times wrote: “Of all the many books written about race in America in the past couple of years, none has been quite like The Other Side of the River…It is the difference between the two towns, one white, one black, that anchors this story, give it its soul, and makes it important, essential even, for the rest of us to contemplate.” The book received The Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for Non-Fiction and the Great Lakes Booksellers Award for Non-Fiction. The paperback wrote a new afterword for the paperback.

Between books, Kotlowitz has contributed to The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker and public radio’s This American Life. Over the past three years, he has produced three collections of personal narratives for Chicago Public Radio: Stories of Home, Love Stories and Stories of Money. Stories of Home was awarded a Peabody. He has served as a correspondant and writer for a Frontline documentary, Let’s Get Married, as well as correspondant and writer for two pieces for PBS’s Media Matters. His articles have also appeared in The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic and The New Republic. He is a writer-in-residence at Northwestern University where he teaches two courses every winter, and a visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame as the Welch Chair in American Studies where he teaches one course every fall. He has also been a writer-in-residence at the University of Chicago. Kotlowitz regularly gives public lectures.

His journalism honors include the George Foster Peabody Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and the George Polk Award. He is the recipient of three honorary degrees and the John LaFarge Memorial Award for Interracial Justice given by New York’s Catholic Interracial Council.

He currently lives with his family just outside Chicago."