Robert Katz (born 27 June 1933) is an American novelist, screenwriter, and non-fiction author.
Katz was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Sidney and Helen Katz, née Holland, and married Beverly Gerstel on September 22, 1957. The couple had two sons: Stephen Lee Katz, Jonathan Howard Katz.
He studied at Brooklyn College 1951-53 then went on to being a photojournalist, filmmaker, United Hias Service, NYC 1953-57. As a writer he began at the American Cancer Society in New York (1958-63) and then at the United Nations in New York and Rome (1963-64). He has been a freelance writer since 1964.
He has fulfilled academic roles at numerous institutions, including being Visiting Professor of Investigative Journalism at the University of California, Santa Cruz (1986-92). Awarded an ongoing Guggenheim Fellowship in 1970, he has also been a fellow of Adlai E. Stevenson College; University of California during 1986 to 1992. He becane a grantee of the American Council Learned Societies in 1971; and a recipient of the Laceno d'Oro (best screenplay) award at the Neorealist Film Festival in Avellino, Italy (1983).
Katz lost a criminal-libel case in Italy over the contents of his book "Death in Rome" in which he blamed Pope Pius XII for the massacre of 335 Romans and 70 Jews at the Ardeatine Caves in 1944. He was sued by the Pope's family.