Carlo Rotella


Carlo Rotella is an American non-fiction writer and academic.

Life

Carlo Rotella is the son of Salvatore Rotella, a chancellor of City Colleges of Chicago originally from Sicily. His mother was from Spain and was a professor of comparative literature at St. Xavier University in Chicago. They lived in South Side, Chicago. He attended the nearby University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. His undergraduate education was at Wesleyan University, and his PhD in American studies from Yale University. He is a professor of American studies, English, and journalism at Boston College.
His books include The World Is Always Coming to an End: Pulling Together and Apart in a Chicago Neighborhood ; Playing in Time: Essays, Profiles, and Other True Stories ; Cut Time: An Education at the Fights ; Good With Their Hands: Boxers, Bluesmen, and Other Characters from the Rust Belt ; October Cities: The Redevelopment of Urban Literature. He is co-editor, with Michael Ezra, of The Bittersweet Science: Fifteen Writers in the Gym, in the Corner, and at Ringside.
Rotella writes for the New York Times Magazine. He has been a regular columnist for the Boston Globe and a radio commentator for WGBH-FM. His work has also appeared in Boston, Washington Post Magazine and The New Yorker.
He has held Guggenheim, Howard, and Du Bois fellowships, and received the Whiting Writers Award, the L. L. Winship / PEN New England Award, and The American Scholars prizes for Best Essay and Best Work by a Younger Writer. Cut Time was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He has received U.S. Speaker and Specialist Grants from the State Department to lecture in China and Bosnia and Herzegovina. For the University of Chicago Press, Rotella was a founding editor of a series titled "Chicago Visions and Revisions".
He is the younger brother of journalist Sebastian Rotella.

Awards

  • 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship
  • Howard fellowships
  • Du Bois fellowships
  • 2007 Whiting Award
  • L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award, Cut Time: An Education at the Fights
  • The American Scholar's prizes for Best Essay

    Books

  • The World Is Always Coming to an End: Pulling Together and Apart in a Chicago Neighborhood.
  • Co-editor, with Michael Ezra, The Bittersweet Science: Fifteen Writers in the Gym, in the Corner, and at Ringside.
  • Playing in Time: Essays, Profiles, and Other True Stories.
  • Cut Time: An Education at the Fights.
  • Good With Their Hands: Boxers, Bluesmen, and Other Characters from the Rust Belt.
  • October Cities: The Redevelopment of Urban Literature.

    Essays and articles

  • "The Unexpected Power of Your Old Neighborhood", The New Yorker
  • "The View from 71st and Jeffery: A Chicago Neighborhood Holds a Mirror to a Struggling Middle Class", Fortune
  • "A Shrinking Middle Class is Ruining the Character of Our Neighborhoods", The New York Times, May 19, 2019
  • "Harry Greb, Gene Tunney, Jack Dempsey, and the Roaring Twenties", The Cambridge Companion to Boxing, ed. Gerald Early : 79-89
  • "'I Come in Here So I Don't Have to Hate Her': Midland and the Barroom Weeper", Journal of Popular Music Studies 30.4 : 5-10
  • "Otis Rush", New York Times Magazine : 20
  • "A Tough Crowd in Doboj", Literary Hub
  • "Weird Tales", Chicago by the Book: 101 Publications That Shaped the City and Its Image : 100-101
  • "Urban Literature: A User's Guide", Journal of Urban History 44.4 : 797-805
  • "Prefight: The Baddest 49-Year-Old On the Planet" and "Postfight: Your Intelligence Come Up", The Bittersweet Science: Fifteen Writers in the Gym, in the Corner, and at Ringside, ed. Carlo Rotella and Michael Ezra : 1-7, 125-150
  • "Roy Dotrice", New York Times Magazine
  • "Ball Games and War Games", catalogue essay for "PlayTime", an exhibition on games at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA
  • "LaMotta: More Than 'Raging'", The New York Times, A25
  • "Foreword", Jack Vance, Cugel: The Skybreak Spatterlight
  • "'Hurtin' ': Margo Price", New York Times Magazine : 28-32
  • "Buddy Emmons", New York Times Magazine : 56
  • "No Dragons, No Zombies", Washington Post Magazine : 8-15
  • "Everything at Once", New York Times Magazine : 28-33
  • "The Inevitable Spectacle of Mayweather vs Pacquiao", New York Times Magazine :
  • "Profiling 'Money", Public Culture 271: 7-19
  • "Leading With His Head", New York Times Magazine : 22-27
  • "The Landscape of Home", Our Boston: Writers Celebrate the City They Love, ed. Andrew Blauner : 290-300
  • "No Child Left Untableted", New York Times Magazine : 26-32, 53
  • "With a Rebel Twang", New York Times Magazine : 36-39
  • "Hector 'Macho' Camacho", New York Times Magazine : 27
  • "The Cult of Micky Ward in Massachusetts", For the Home Team: Essays on Sport, Community, and Identity, ed. Daniel Nathan
  • "The Case Against Kojak Liberalism", The Wire: Race, Class, and Genre, ed. Liam Kennedy and Stephen Shapiro : 113-129
  • "Within Limits: On the Greatness of Magic Slim", Pop When the World Falls Apart, ed. Eric Weisbard : 230-239
  • "Hollywood on the Charles", Boston : 39-43
  • "So Many Fearsome Contemporaries", New York Times Magazine : 28-29
  • "A Darker Shade of Green", New York Times Magazine : 34-38
  • "A Wild Mind Loose in Suburbia", New York Times Magazine : 24-29
  • "True to True Grit", New York Times Magazine : 11-12
  • "The Professor of Micropopularity", New York Times Magazine : 50-55
  • "Ghosts", My Town: Writers on American Cities Excerpted online
  • "The Long Shot", Washington Post Magazine : cover, 10-17
  • "Class Warrior", The New Yorker : 24-29
  • "The End of American Sporting Life", A New Literary History of America, ed. Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors : 856-860
  • "Desperately Seeking Deval", Boston : 74-79, 134-142
  • "The Genre Artist", New York Times Magazine : 20-25
  • "Crime Story", Washington Post Magazine : cover, 8-15, 22-26
  • "And Now, the Biggest Entertainer in Entertainment", Play: The New York Times Sports Magazine : 56-61, 87
  • "Praying for Stones Like This: The Godfather Trilogy", Catholics in the Movies, ed. Colleen McDannell : 227-252
  • "When the Gloves Came Off", Boston : 120-123, 134-139
  • "Pulp History", Raritan 271 : 11-36
  • "Shannon Briggs Says Nyet", New York Times Magazine : 36-39
  • "The Two Jameses", The Believer : 49-54
  • "The Elements of Providence", Washington Post Magazine : 24-28, 51-53
  • "The Kingdom and the Power", Boston : 69-84

    Anthologies

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