Hi, I’m Freddie deBoer, a writer and academic. I write a newsletter on culture and politics. I have three books currently under contract.

• a novel titled The Mind Reels, about a young woman slowly losing her mind, to be published by Coffee House Press in 2025;
• a nonfiction book titled When Empathy Failed: A History of Madness in the 21st Century, about how cultural attitudes towards mental illness have gone badly wrong, to be published by Simon & Schuster in 2026;
• an academic book titled Writing Itself, about the teaching of college writing, to be published by Harvard University Press, release date TBD.

My most recent book, How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2023. My first, The Cult of Smart, was published by St. Martin’s in 2020. I’m represented by the Inkwell Management literary agency. I’m an experienced ghostwriter and developmental editor, and I’ve done content development for major textbook companies in the past. I’m available for the right projects; please feel free to email me at the address listed below.

I’m a prolific freelancer and have written for many of the biggest publications in the world. In print, I’ve been published in places like The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Playboy, New York, Harper’s, and others. On the web, I’ve also been published in places like The Guardian, Politico, n+1, The New Republic, Foreign Policy, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Salon, The Huffington Post, The Week, The Daily Beast, The Observer, Jacobin, Current Affairs, Vox, Unherd, Compact, Persuasion, and others. I’ve appeared on dozens of podcasts and radio shows, including several appearances on NPR, as well as on Al-Jazeera America and CSPAN. You can see a selection of my freelance writing by clicking on “Published Work” above.

You can follow my book reviews at Goodreads and my movie reviews on Letterboxd. I live in Connecticut with my wife and my cat Suavecito. You can email me here.