A Private Midnight

Scott Fried is a national public speaker, health educator and author. He has devoted the past sixteen years of his life lecturing in nearly every state in this country, as well as Israel, England, Canada, Holland and Honduras, reaching more than a million people. He has spoken at over 500 institutions, including colleges and universities, high schools and middle schools, summer camps, synagogues and churches. In addition, he has lectured widely at youth retreats, juvenile detention centers and prisons, alternative schools, learning disabled populations, gay/straight alliances, PTO meetings and teacher training workshops. Topics include sexual responsibility, abstinence, dating, transmission of HIV, homosexuality, eating disorders, body image, self-mutilation, suicide, alcohol and drug misuse, dealing with divorce and broken-heartedness, among others.

Scott Fried’s A Private Midnight: A Teenager’s Scrapbook of Secrets reveals the universal chorus of questions, fears and restrained hope looking for an outlet. In conjunction with the publication of the new book, Fried was invited to appear at a discussion on World AIDS Day at the Clinton Foundation.

He is the author of two books. If I Grow Up: Talking With Teens About AIDS, Love And Staying Alive is a moving chronicle of his experiences and lectures. The book is part journal, part guide and part love-letter, researched and compiled from hundreds of lectures to 1000s of students across the country. My Invisible Kingdom : Letters from the Secret Lives of Teens , presents a cross-section of the thousands of letters from students who have written to Scott in an attempt to share their pain and doubt on such diverse topics as rape, eating disorders, suicide, self-mutilation, coming out, addiction and broken hearts. The book is also intended for parents and other adults who are concerned about the physical and psychological well-being of today's youth.

In addition to his lectures, Scott has conducted peer HIV-education programs for the tri-state area, encouraging teenagers to teach their own peer group and co-founded an HIV-positive speakers' bureau, through a nonprofit AIDS service organization and in connection with the NYC Board of Education, providing free HIV prevention workshops to students in the five boroughs. He was seen on the television daytime drama Guiding Light portraying Bart, a young man living with AIDS.