Mitch Albom

Mitch Albom (born May 23, 1958, in Passaic, New Jersey) is an American newspaper columnist, broadcaster, and author whose narrative nonfiction and inspirational novels have sold in excess of forty million copies worldwide. A graduate of Brandeis University with a master's in journalism from Columbia, Albom joined the Detroit Free Press as a sports columnist in 1985 and remained on its masthead for the next four decades, becoming one of the most syndicated sports columnists in the United States. His national reputation rests on "Tuesdays with Morrie" (1997), a slim memoir of his weekly visits with his dying former sociology professor Morrie Schwartz at Schwartz's home outside Boston. The book was rejected by multiple major publishers before Doubleday acquired it for a modest advance; it went on to spend more than four years on the New York Times bestseller list and has sold over seventeen million copies in forty-five languages, becoming the best-selling memoir of all time. Oprah Winfrey produced a 1999 television adaptation starring Jack Lemmon in his final role and Hank Azaria as Albom. Albom followed with a series of philosophical novels exploring mortality, grace, and the meaning of an ordinary life: "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" (2003), "For One More Day" (2006), "Have a Little Faith" (2009), "The Time Keeper" (2012), "The First Phone Call from Heaven" (2013), "The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto" (2015), "The Next Person You Meet in Heaven" (2018), and "The Stranger in the Lifeboat" (2021). His most recent novel, "The Little Liar" (2023), is set during the Holocaust in Salonika, Greece. Outside his writing, Albom hosts the daily ESPN radio show "The Mitch Albom Show" and operates several charitable foundations in Detroit and at the Have Faith Haiti orphanage in Port-au-Prince, which he assumed responsibility for following the 2010 earthquake. He continues to write his Detroit Free Press column.