Claudia Rowe on Foster Care

Claudia Rowe is a member of The Seattle Times editorial board and author of Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care, a finalist for the 2025 National Book Award in Nonfiction.

A native of New York City, Claudia began her journalism career at a Bronx weekly and for the 34 years since has focused exclusively on the places where youth and government clash: the child welfare system, public schools and juvenile court.

Her work has been published in The New York Times, Mother Jones magazine, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where Claudia earned a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. She is also the author of Time Out, an e-book commissioned by Amazon Original Stories about a 13-year-old boy in Seattle who was sentenced to 23 years in the adult prison system.

Claudia’s investigative and explanatory reporting has received numerous awards, including honors from the Society for Professional Journalists and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

In 2018, her true-crime memoir, The Spider and the Fly, won the Washington State Book Award.