Meg Kissinger

Pulitzer Prize finalist Meg Kissinger is the author of “While You Were Out,” a searing memoir of a family besieged by mental illness. The book is an incisive exploration of the systems that failed them and a testament to the love that sustained them. Powerful, candid, and filled with surprising humor, this is the story of one family’s love and resilience in the face of great loss.

Kissinger spent more than two decades traveling across the country writing about America’s mental health system for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She has won dozens of accolades, including two George Polk Awards, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, Investigative Reporters and Editors, and two National Journalism Awards.

Kissinger is a trainer for the Dart Center for Trauma and Journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She previously taught investigative reporting and was a visiting professor at DePauw University, her alma mater. Her stories on the abysmal living conditions for people with mental illness inspired changes to state law and led to the creation of hundreds of new housing units. Meg Kissinger lives in Milwaukee with her husband.