Carol Felsenthal biography

Carol Felsenthal specializes in writing biographies and magazine profiles. She has written five books, among them unauthorized biographies of Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Katharine Graham, and S.I. Newhouse, Jr. First serial rights to her books have sold to Vanity Fair, Family Circle, and Woman’s Day. Excerpts from her books and articles have appeared in newspapers across the country and abroad. She is a Contributing Editor at Chicago magazine.

Recent magazine profile subjects include Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, gossip columnist Irv Kupcinet, advice columnist Ann Landers, former Commerce Secretary and Gore Campaign chairman William Daley, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The Ann Landers profile ran as the cover story of Chicago magazine in February, 2003, made news in publications worldwide, and several newspapers, including The New York Daily News, serialized it. [Felsenthal’s profile of Irv Kupcinet won the 2004 Peter Lisagor Award for In-Depth Reporting awarded by the Society of Professional Journalists.] Her most recently published piece is “A Life in Movies,” a profile of film critic Roger Ebert.

She has just completed Clinton in Exile: A President Out of the White House, a book about Bill Clinton’s post presidency. The book was published May 6, 2008 by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins.

HBO will soon start production of a television adaptation of her biography of Katharine Graham, Power, Privilege and the Post: The Katharine Graham Story. Joan Didion has written the revised screenplay; Tom Hooper, who recently completed an HBO mini series on John Adams, is set to direct.

In 2005 and 2006 she taught “Writing Profiles” at the University of Chicago—a course that drew on her experience writing magazine profiles of people ranging from Ann Landers to Don Rumsfeld. She has also given speeches around the country and abroad and appeared on scores of television and radio shows to talk about her experiences writing unauthorized biographies of some of the country's most powerful people.

Felsenthal has written a nationally distributed book review column. She has also reviewed books for The Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, among other newspapers.

She has appeared on scores of radio and television programs, around the country -- among them The “Charlie Rose Show,” “McNeil/Lehrer Newshour,”--and abroad (most recently on the BBC), and has become a frequent guest on the syndicated radio/television show “Beyond the Beltway.” That show, which is heard on more than 60 radio stations nationwide, has recently been picked up by XM Satellite Radio.

She has been the featured speaker for many organizations around the country, as well as for schools, including the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, the University of Illinois in Urbana, and Columbia University Law School in New York.

A native Chicagoan, Felsenthal was educated in the Chicago public schools, the University of Illinois at Urbana, where she received her B.A with High Honors and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and Boston College, where she received her M.A. She is married to Steven Felsenthal, an attorney. They have three children and live in Chicago.