His exploration of an eighteen-year murder-exoneration case and the police tactics that can lead to false confessions[11] received the John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim 2011 Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award.
[12] Kolker's 2004 story in New York Magazine about a public-school embezzlement scandal was adapted for the feature film Bad Education, starring Hugh Jackman.
The piece focused on the years long litigation between two former employees of Boston based writing center GrubStreet: Dawn Dorland, a former writing instructor and kidney donor, and Sonya Larson, a promising young writer accused of plagiarizing Dorland.
[14] The piece went viral and renewed attention to the case led to the dismissal of Sonya Larson and several of her friends, also implicated in the dispute, from their positions at GrubStreet.
Kolker's 2020 book Hidden Valley Road is the nonfiction account of the Galvins, a midcentury American family, with twelve children.