About
Ronald K. Fried is a writer and television producer. His latest book, Frank Costello: A Novel, was published by SUNY Press/Excelsior Editions on December 1, 2022.
Publisher's Weekly called Fried's first novel, My Father's Fighter, "a literary knockout" and The New York Times recommended it in its 2004 Vacation Reading issue. The Columbus Dispatch said the novel was "worthy of being ranked with… W. C. Heinz's The Professional and Leonard Gardner's classic Fat City.
Reviewing Christmas in Paris 2002, Publishers Weekly wrote, "Fried's fine second novel … finds its center in the confluence of its political moment and [the protagonist's] place in it, tracing the erosion of known worlds." Bookreporter wrote: "[Fried] doesn't miss a beat—he's terrific at describing worry and pride and vanity. ….A rich, satisfying portrait of two people who will make you think in a whole new way about yourself and your choices." The Times wrote: "Fried's novel has a cunning subtext: in its detailed portrait of one man's narrow world, it hints broadly at the larger hazards--both personal and political--of living in a bubble."
Fried's Corner Men:Great Boxing Trainers was a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year," and former Daily News boxing columnist Michael Katz called it a "classic."
Fried is a frequent contributor to The Daily Beast where he's written about everything from Honoré de Balzac, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Martin Amis to Trump, boxing, and the Mafia. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, The Millions, and The Norman Mailer Review. He contributed a chapter to Norman Mailer in Context (Cambridge University Press).
Fried's television credits include producing shows for Dick Cavett, Tina Brown, and Alec Baldwin. During his long association with Cavett, Fried produced shows with writers such as Saul Bellow, August Wilson,Gore Vidal, and John Cheever and John Updike (in a joint appearance), as well as Richard Pryor, Jean-Luc Godard, Billy Joel, and many others. He's been a writer and producer on series for PBS, AMC, History, USA, Amazon, and Netflix. He also produced Tina Brown's video interviews with Philip Roth, Ian McEwan, and David Remnick for The Daily Beast.
As Vice President and Executive Producer at MetroTV, a division of Rainbow Media (now AMC Networks), Fried earn five New York Emmy Awards and multiple nominations for a series shot entirely in the New York City subway system and coverage of New York's Fashion week.
Production of Two Mailers, Fried's play about Norman Mailer and his son, John Buffalo Mailer, has been postponed owing to the pandemic.
Fried graduated from Columbia University where he won the Bennet Cerf story competition and the Cornell Woolrich Fellowship as outstanding undergraduate fiction writer. He was a 2010 Fellow at the Norman Mailer Writers Colony. He is married to the writer Lorraine Kreahling. They live in New York City.Fried is a member of PEN America and the Authors Guild.
Featured Work
Frank Costello: A Novel
As Frank Costello looks back over his life as head of the most powerful crime family in America, he doesn't focus on the triumphs of his bootlegging empire, his nationwide gambling network, or his de facto control of Tammany Hall. Instead, Costello—the politically connected "Prime Minister of the Underworld"—remembers the lies he's told, the mistakes he's made, and his fateful decision to testify before the televised Kefauver hearings investigating organized crime in America. The novel reaches its climax as Costello—in a naïve attempt to preserve the patina of respectability he's spent his life creating—tries to defend himself before senators out to expose the full extent of the Mafia's reach. The result is a humiliating, very public lesson about who holds the real power in America. This is an historically accurate work of fiction told in Costello's imagined, bitter, streetwise voice
