Bestselling author Alex Kotlowitz is recognized for more than three decades of unflinching portrayals of race and poverty in America in many forms of media—print and radio journalism, documentary film, and books. The New York Public Library selected Kotlowitz’s There Are No Children Here, a biography of two boys growing up in a Chicago public housing project, as one of the 150 most important books of the 20th century.

His latest book, An American Summer, offers a spellbinding collection of profiles of people touched by violence.