Lucette Matalon Lagnado

Lucette Lagnado, an investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal, was born in Cairo, Egypt; she and her family left Egypt as refugees when she was a small child, an experience that helped shape and inform her memoir, THE MAN IN THE WHITE SHARKSKIN SUIT, published by Ecco/HarperCollins. She is the 2008 recipient of the $100,000 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, the largest cash award in the Jewish book world. Lucette has received widespread recognition for her work. Sharkskin has been translated in several languages including Spanish, Hebrew, and Arabic; it is being translated into French. As an investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal, she has covered health care for a decade. She has been a finalist or received prizes from, among others, Columbia Journalism School, the University of Missouri, and the University of Southern California. In recent years, she has focused her coverage on hospitals and nursing homes, with a special emphasis on the elderly, the poor, and the uninsured. In 2008, Ms. Lagnado received two awards for her nursing home coverage: The National Press Club Joseph Riley Award for Excellence in Writing on Geriatric Issues, as well as the Jack Newfield Award given by FRIA - Friends and Relatives of the Institutionalized Aged. She is also the 2004 recipient of the Clarion Award by the Women in Communications association for her investigative series on how hospitals and bill collectors prey on the uninsured and those least able to pay their medical bills. Ms. Lagnado has also been recognized in prior years by the New York Press Club, which gave her its highest award, the Golden Typewriter for Outstanding Public Service, for her investigative work exposing the plight of America's uninsured. She is also the recipient of Columbia University's prestigious Mike Berger Award for her reporting about the elderly residents of the Belnord, a fabled West Side apartment building. She is the co-author of Children of the Flames: Dr. Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz," a biography of the Nazi concentration camp doctor and the young children who were the subjects of his medical experiments during World War 2. Children of the Flames has been translated into nearly a dozen languages; a Hebrew edition is being published by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. She received a bachelor of Arts degree from Vassar College where she majored in French literature. She and her husband, Douglas Feiden, a reporter for the Daily News, reside in Sag Harbor and New York City. (photo courtesy of Peter Yang, Glamour Magazine)