Neal Karlen

Neal Karlen is an American journalist and non-fiction writer currently living in Minneapolis.

Karlen grew up in a Jewish family in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and attended St. Louis Park High School.

He studied Yiddish at Brown University.

Karlen has been a contributing author to many well-known magazines, including Newsweek, The New York Times, and Rolling Stone.

He is the author of eight books, and he teaches non-fiction writing at the University of Minnesota's Graduate School of Journalism.

• Take My Life, Please! - Henny Youngman (1991)
• The Babe in Boyland (1995)
• Babes in Toyland: The Making and Selling of a Rock and Roll Band (1995)
• Jen-X: Jenny McCarthy's Open Book (1997)
• Slouching Toward Fargo: A Two-Year Saga Of Sinners And St. Paul Saints At The Bottom Of The Bush Leagues With Bill Murray, Darryl Strawberry, Dakota Sadie And Me (1999)
• Shanda: The Making and Breaking of a Self-loathing Jew (2004) Simon and Schuster.
• The Story of Yiddish: How a Mish-Mosh of Languages Saved the Jews (2009) HarperCollins.
• Augie's Secrets: The Minneapolis Mob and the King of the Hennepin Strip (2013) Minnesota Historical Society Press.

• New York Media, LLC (22 August 1994). New York Magazine. New York Media, LLC. pp. 47–. ISSN 0028-7369. 
• BABES IN TOYLAND by Neal Karlen | Kirkus
• "Book Review: 'JEN-X: Jenny McCarthy's Open Book' Jenny McCarthy, Neal Karlen". Reviewed by Dana Kennedy, Entertainment Weekly, Nov 14, 1997
• SLOUCHING TOWARD FARGO by Neal Karlen | Kirkus
• "Slouching Toward Fargo: A Two-Year Saga of Sinners and St. Paul Saints at the Bottom of the Bush Leagues with Bill Murray, Darryl Strawberry". Publishers Weekly.
• "Review: Slouching Toward Fargo". Baseball Journeyman.
• Jewish Book World. JWB Jewish Book Council. 2004. 
• "Mireille Silcoff: On a tongue with no land and the (j)oys of speaking Yiddish". National Post.
• Review: "Augie's Secrets,’ by Neal Karlen takes us back to notorious days of 1930s' Minneapolis Mob | Star Tribune
• "Neal Karlen stirs up the mobster ghosts of Hennepin Avenue". MinnPost

Neal was the recipient of the CASEY Award in 1999 for his book Slouching Toward Fargo.