Author/Journalist Kotlowitz to Give Reading

Award-winning journalist and nonfiction writer Alex Kotlowitz will read selections from his works at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 24, at Northwestern University. Kotlowitz, currently writer-in-residence at Northwestern's Center for the Writing Arts, is best known for “There Are No Children Here,” a chronicle of two boys growing up amid the poverty and violence of a Chicago housing project.

Free and open to the public, Kotlowitz’s reading will take place in Room 108 of Harris Hall, 1881 Sheridan Road. Kotlowitz will read from his latest book, “Never a City So Real: A Walk in Chicago” and offer a sneak preview of radio pieces he has produced for Chicago Public Radio. Those pieces are scheduled for broadcast in February.

In 1993, Kotlowitz left The Wall Street Journal where he wrote on urban affairs and social policy to write “The Other Side of the River: A Story of Two Towns, a Death and America's Dilemma.” With that book and  “There Are No Children Here,” Kotlowitz has earned the reputation as one of the most sensitive authors writing today about race and poverty in America.

“Never a City So Real,” also available as a compact disc, explores Chicago’s hidden neighborhoods and profiles a sampling of residents who to Kotlowitz give Chicago its vitality. Among them are single mothers living on the West Side, a former steelworker, a soul food restaurateur and a muralist who paints over the tired cinderblock walls of a public housing project.

A native New Yorker, Kotlowitz has lived in Chicago for 20 years. He freelances for the New Yorker, New York Times Magazine and public radio. 

For further information about the reading or the Center for the Writing Arts, call (847) 467-4099 or email words@northwestern.edu.

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