Journalist and Nonfiction writer

Kenneth R. Rosen

Fee Range

< $25,000

Travels From

Boston, MASSACHUSETTS

At a glance:

Kenneth R. Rosen has earned a reputation writing award-winning essays and journalism exploring war, humility, violence, addiction, and mental health as an outspoken champion of underdogs and outcasts.

Ken spent his early life in and out of mental health and addiction treatment programs for young adults. He spent his teenage years at programs that practiced controversial therapeutic methods aimed at “redirecting” teenagers. That story (one of turmoil and redemption), along with the stories of four other teenagers subjected to the experimental treatment, is the subject of his second book, “TROUBLED.”

Each year thousands of teenagers deemed out of control are carted off to wilderness programs in the woods, ranches in the Southwest, and residential treatment facilities across the country. Catering to young adults with depression, anxiety, anger issues, sexual deviance, and drug and alcohol problems, these pricey private programs have been unregulated and unchecked for years, using treatment “therapies” often ascribed to boot camps. Parents, desperate to get their children’s lives back on track and to keep them out of prison, or worse, will cough up the costly tuitions for one last shot at saving their sons and daughters. But what is the real price of “tough love”?

Ken’s book pulls back the veil on the massively profitable, nearly unregulated behavioral correction industry and tells the story of the young adults it failed for the first time. Ken guides readers through this world with the knowledge of an insider, with the goal of offering up a work of literary reportage that’s a nuanced portrait of coming of age, mistreatment, and redemption, as well as an incisive critique of this business that lies at the cross-section of the private health and prison industries.

He uses this experience in his speeches and presentations, mixing personal anecdotes with hard-hitting numbers which confirm a sad reality about treatment, addiction, incarceration, and mental health across American today.

His narrative essays have appeared in Tin House, The Rumpus, Narratively, and Creative Nonfiction, among others, which have received recognition in the Best American Essays anthology. His reporting he has won the Bayeux-Calvados Award for War Correspondents, an AWC Clarion Award for Online Feature Article, a Steven Sotloff Memorial 2Lives Foundation Security Training Scholarship and was a finalist for the Livingston Award, considered the Pulitzer Prizes for writers under 35-years-old.

His work has been supported by the MacDowell Colony (a recipient of the Calderwood Foundation Art of Nonfiction Grant), the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Fulbright Program, the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, the Fund for American Studies, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation with John Jay’s Center on Media, Crime, and Justice, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, and the Logan Nonfiction Program at the Carey Institute for Global Good.

Now a frequent contributor to WIRED, The New York Times, Harper’s, and The Atlantic, he divides his time between the Berkshires and the Dolomites.

Meet The Journalist- Pulitzer

Addiction and Recovery
Mental Health and Substance Abuse
Healthcare Policy
Incarceration and Inspiring Lives

Bulletproof Vest (Object Lessons)

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Kenneth R. Rosen

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