• Royce Fellowship
Kevin
Roose

Concentration 

Writing

Award Year 

2008
Old Songs for a New World: The Future of Barbershop Harmony

Faculty Sponsor: Doug Brown

The Barbershop Harmony Society is in trouble. The waning popularity and aging membership of the all-male singing organization, combined with heated internal feuding, threaten its continued existence. Kevin spent a summer meeting with Barbershop leaders, combing the BHS archives and interviewing young singers to assess the current state of barbershop and make recommendations for its future.

Kevin currently works for Fusion, an ABC- Univision Joint-Venture. Prior to Fusion, he worked as a writer at New York magazine, where he covered business and technology for the magazine and the Daily Intelligencer blog. Before that, Kevin worked at The New York Times, where he covered Wall Street and the culture of finance for the paper and for DealBook, the Times' financial news site. Kevin's latest book, Young Money, about the world of young Wall Street bankers, debuted on the New York Times bestseller list. His last book, The Unlikely Disciple, a memoir of the semester he spent undercover at Jerry Falwell's ultra-evangelical Liberty University, was published in 2009. Kevin has written for GQ, Esquire, ESPN: The Magazine, and SPIN. He lives in Berkeley, California.