Quick Facts
Biography
Robert Kolker is an American journalist, formerly a contributing editor at New York Magazine, a former projects and investigations reporter for Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Businessweek, and the author of Lost Girls, a book that was a New York Times best-seller and named one of Publishers Weekly's Top Ten Books of 2013. In 2020, his book Hidden Valley Road was published, and was selected for the revival of Oprah's Book Club.
Career
Longform Journalism
As a journalist, Kolker's work has appeared in New York Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, GQ, O, The Oprah Magazine, and Men’s Journal. His work often takes the form of reported narratives.His 2006 investigation into sexual abuse in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community helped bring an abuser to justice and was nominated for a National Magazine Award.His exploration of an eighteen-year murder-exoneration case and the police tactics that can lead to false confessions received the John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim 2011 Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award.
Kolker's 2004 story in New York Magazine about a public-school embezzlement scandal was adapted for the feature film Bad Education, starring Hugh Jackman. The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2019 before its rights were acquired by HBO.
Lost Girls
Kolker's 2013 book Lost Girls recounts the lives of five sex workers murdered by the Long Island serial killer, and the story of the hunt for the as-yet-unidentified killer. It also explores the implications of the emergence of on-line personal ads as a major vehicle for sex work. The book received wide critical acclaim.
Lost Girls was adapted for the 2020 feature film Lost Girls, directed by Liz Garbus and starring Amy Ryan.
Hidden Valley Road
Kolker's 2020 book Hidden Valley Road is the nonfiction account of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science’s great hope in the quest to understand the disease.