Carlo Rotella

His mother was from Spain and was a professor of comparative literature at St. Xavier University in Chicago.

[2] His books include The World Is Always Coming to an End: Pulling Together and Apart in a Chicago Neighborhood (University of Chicago Press, 2019); Playing in Time: Essays, Profiles, and Other True Stories (University of Chicago Press, 2012); Cut Time: An Education at the Fights (Houghton Mifflin, 2003); Good With Their Hands: Boxers, Bluesmen, and Other Characters from the Rust Belt (University of California Press, 2002); October Cities: The Redevelopment of Urban Literature (University of California Press, 1998).

He is co-editor, with Michael Ezra, of The Bittersweet Science: Fifteen Writers in the Gym, in the Corner, and at Ringside (University of Chicago Press, 2017).

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 Scholar's prizes for Best Essay and Best Work by a Younger Writer.

He has received U.S. Speaker and Specialist Grants from the State Department to lecture in China and Bosnia and Herzegovina.