Robert Kolker is the author of Hidden Valley Road, an Oprah's Book Club selection and an instant #1 New York Times nonfiction best-seller. His previous book, Lost Girls, was also a New York Times best-seller and one of the New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2013, as well as a Publisher’s Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year, one of Time’s best true crime books ever, and one of Slate’s best nonfiction books of the last 25 years. 

Kolker’s journalism has appeared in New York magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, GQ, O magazine, and The Marshall Project. He is a National Magazine Award finalist and a recipient of the 2011 Harry Frank Guggenheim Award for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. 

In 2020, two works by Kolker were adapted into feature films. Netflix’s “Lost Girls,” directed by Liz Garbus and starring Amy Ryan and Gabriel Byrne, is an adaptation of Kolker's 2013 book. And HBO’s “Bad Education,” starring Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney, is adapted from “The Bad Superintendent,” Kolker's 2004 story in New York magazine about a public-school embezzlement scandal.

Hidden Valley Road is the nonfiction account of a mid-century American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science’s great hope in the quest to understand the disease. 

We encourage all attendees to purchase their copies of the book through our local partner, Inkwood Books in Haddonfield. Inkwood is providing online ordering, home delivery, and curbside pick-up during the COVID-19 quarantine, and will have signed copies available.