Kenneth R. Rosen is a writer, he works at The New York Times. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in VQR, the New Yorker, Harper's, and The Atlantic, among other print and web publications. His personal essay "Notes from My Suicide" was listed as a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2017. He has also appeared as a commentator on NPR and a variety of podcasts. He has been a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, a Robert Novak fellow, and a contributing writer at Pacific Standard.
In 2022, Rosen received the Kurt Schork Freelance Award for his reporting from Ukraine, Syria, and Malta, which the judges called “courageous multifaceted investigative work.” His reporting and investigations have also been supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Fulbright Program, the Steven Joel Sotloff Memorial Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation with John Jay’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice, and the Carey Institute for Global Good.
He is a two-time finalist for the Livingston Award in international reporting and, among other honors, he received the 2018 Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award for War Correspondents for his reporting from Iraq and was a finalist in 2019 for his reporting from within Syria and a Clarion Award for his reporting from Iraq. He is a 2024 finalist for a Scripps Howard Award in opinion writing, and a 2024 The de Groot Foundation Writer of Note grant recipient. His work has been translated into Arabic, Spanish, German, and Japanese.
He is the author of Troubled: The Failed Promise of America’s Behavioral Treatment Programs (Little A, 2021), which The New York Times Book Review called “a searing exposé” and a “public service.” Troubled was a Times Editors’ Choice, one of Newsweek’s most highly anticipated titles of 2021, and was optioned separately as a feature film and a docuseries. The work also helped launch independent inquiries, by the Government Accountability Office and the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, into abuses at congregate care facilities for at-risk youth. His first book, Bulletproof Vest (Bloomsbury, 2020), was named one of the most fascinating books WIRED read that year.
At MacDowell in 2019, Rosen completed his books Troubled: The Failed Promise of America's Behavioral Treatment Programs, and Bulletproof Vest. During his 2024 residency, he worked on completing the manuscript of his third narrative nonfiction book about a new Cold War in the Arctic regions, for publication by Simon & Schuster in 2026.
