FRED ROSEN

I love writing narrative non-fiction. True crime and history have been my metier.

I became a writer on a warm, bright fall night at about one in the morning at USC's film school. I was studying for my Master of Fine Arts when my editing teacher, Ken Robinson, said, "You're a writer aren't you?" He was challenging me on something I had written. And from that moment, I knew that I was one.

Earlier in my career, under the name "Frederic W. Rosen," I was the Camera columnist for The New York Times. Later, I was a journalism professor at Hofstra University and most recently a film professor at the New York Institute of Technology. I eventually was offered the opportunity to write a true crime book and ran with it.

Lobster Boy, Body Dump, There But For the Grace of God, The Historical Atlas of American Crime and Trails of Death are among the 25 books I have written and published. I get involved with the cases and people I write about. It's the only way I know.