Mitch Albom

Mitch Albom's Backstory

Early life

Mitch Albom was born in Passaic, New Jersey, on May 23, 1958, lived briefly in Buffalo, and grew up in Oaklyn, New Jersey, near Philadelphia.¹ He taught himself piano at ten.¹ He earned a degree in sociology at Brandeis University in 1979, where one of his professors was Morrie Schwartz, and then master’s degrees in journalism and business at Columbia University, paying part of his way by playing piano.¹

Sports writing

He wrote for the Queens Tribune and freelanced for Sports Illustrated and The Philadelphia Inquirer before joining the Fort Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel in 1983.¹ In 1985 the Detroit Free Press hired him as its lead sports columnist, and in 1989 he added a weekly non-sports column that was later syndicated.¹ The Associated Press Sports Editors named him the nation’s best sports columnist a record 13 times.¹ His first books were collections of columns and sports books, among them Bo (1989), written with the Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler, which became his first New York Times best seller, and Fab Five (1993).¹ In 2005 he and four editors were briefly suspended over a column that wrongly said two former players had attended a game.¹

Tuesdays with Morrie

Years later Albom reconnected with Schwartz, who by then had ALS, and the conversations they had became his best-known book.¹ Tuesdays with Morrie, published in 1997 with a first printing of 20,000 copies, reached number one on the New York Times list and stayed on it for 205 weeks; it has sold more than 20 million copies in 45 languages.¹ He has said his rule for the book was to keep it simple, and that the first 300-page manuscript was cut to about 175 pages.⁴ A 1999 television film won four Emmy Awards, and a stage version he wrote with Jeffrey Hatcher opened Off Broadway in 2002.¹

Novels

His first novel, The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003), was adapted as a 2004 TV film that was the most-watched of that year.¹⁸ Novels including For One More Day (2006), The Time Keeper (2012) and The First Phone Call from Heaven (2013) followed, and a sequel, The Next Person You Meet in Heaven (2018), and The Stranger in the Lifeboat (2021) both debuted at number one on the New York Times list.¹ The Little Liar (2023) is set in occupied Greece, and Twice (2025) is about a man who can relive a moment only once.¹² His books have sold more than 40 million copies.¹

Detroit and Haiti

He founded several charities in Detroit, including SAY Detroit, which funds homeless shelters, and A Hole in the Roof Foundation, which helps faith groups repair buildings used to serve homeless people.¹ Since 2010 he and his wife have run the Have Faith Haiti Mission and Orphanage in Port-au-Prince, which has housed more than 70 children.¹ They adopted Chika Jeune, a girl from the orphanage who had a brain tumor and died in 2017 at age seven; he wrote about her in Finding Chika (2019).¹ He still writes a column for the Free Press.⁶