For the film, Alex received an Emmy, a Cinema Eye Award and an Independent Spirit Award.Ī former staff writer at The Wall Street Journal, Alex’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and on This American Life.

It was cited as one of the best films of the year by The New Yorker, The Chicago Tribune, Entertainment Weekly and The LA Times. His documentary, The Interrupters, a collaboration with Steve James, premiered at Sundance in January 2011 and aired as a two-hour special on PBS’s FRONTLINE. While Alex’s home is print, he has also worked in film and radio. His book on Chicago, Never a City So Real, was recently released in paperback. It was selected by The New York Times as a Notable Book of the Year along with his second book, The Other Side of the River which also received The Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for Nonfiction. Bernstein Award and was adapted as a television movie produced by and starring Oprah Winfrey. His other books include the national bestseller There Are No Children Here, which the New York Public Library selected as one of the 150 most important books of the twentieth century.

He is the author of four books, including his most recent, An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago which received the J. For forty years, Alex Kotlowitz has been telling stories from the heart of America, deeply intimate tales of struggle and perseverance.

An American Summer by Alex Kotlowitz