Jonathan Rosen

Rosen graduated from Yale and began graduate studies working towards a PhD in English at the University of California, Berkeley.[1] He dropped out of graduate school to become a writer.[1]

Rosen describes his "first real job" as being hired by Seth Lipsky in 1990 to create an art section for The Jewish Daily Forward.[2] Rosen describes Lipsky as an important influence.[2] He held the job for 10 years.[1] As of 2007 he was editorial director of the Nextbook.[1]

Rosen's Joy Comes in the Morning (2004) features the protagonist, Rabbi Deborah Green, who struggles with the perceptions of women rabbis. This work's inclusion of a woman rabbi is viewed as a significant development in American Jewish writings featuring women rabbis.[3]

In April 2023, Rosen published The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions, a memoir about his friendship with Michael Laudor, a Yale Law School graduate with schizophrenia who killed his fiancée in 1998 during a psychotic episode.[4] The book was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize[5] and has received high critical acclaim.[6][7][8][4]

Rosen is Jewish and keeps kosher.[2]

He describes having dyslexia.[2]

Rosen is a bird-watcher.[2]

• A talk with Jonathan Rosen
• Book Examines Connection Between Humans, Birds (National Public Radio)

• Rosen, Jonathan (1997). Eve's apple : a novel. New York: Random House. ISBN 9780679448167.
• The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature MacMillan, 2008.[9][10]
• The Talmud and the Internet : a journey between worlds, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000. (0374272387)
• Joy comes in the morning, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004. (0374180261)[11]
• — (January 6, 2014). "The birds : why the passenger pigeon became extinct". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. Vol. 89, no. 43. pp. 62–67.
• — (April 18, 2023). The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions (1st ed.). Penguin Press. ISBN 978-1594206573.