Chris Ballard is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated and the author of four books. He lives in the Bay Area, where he was a visiting lecturer at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism in 2016. This is his fifth appearance in The Best American Sports Writing.
Dan Barry is a columnist and reporter for the New York Times. He has reported from all 50 states on various events, including the World Trade Center attack and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and won many journalism awards, including a share of a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. He is the author of four books: a memoir; a collection of his “About New York” columns; Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game, which received the 2012 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing; and The Boys in the Bunkhouse: Servitude and Salvation in the Heartland.
Sam Borden, the European sports correspondent for the New York Times, has received five APSE awards in writing and is the author of two books: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Soccer Basics and Ace in America (with Mark Feinsand and Peter Abraham), a biography of the former Yankees pitcher Chien-Ming Wang. He is a native of Larchmont, New York, and received a bachelor’s degree from Emory University in 2001 and a master of fine arts in creative writing from Fairfield University in 2013. A soccer aficionado, he is a certified amateur and collegiate referee and also enjoys poker and other card games.
John Branch is a California-based sports reporter for the New York Times. In 2013 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing for his tale of a deadly avalanche, titled “Snow Fall,” and was a finalist the previous year for his story about the late NHL enforcer Derek Boogaard, who died of a painkiller overdose and was found to have CTE, the degenerative brain disease. He lives near San Francisco.
John Brant is a longtime writer-at-large for Runner’s World and contributes to numerous national publications. His most recent book is The Boy Who Runs: The Odyssey of Julius Achon, published in 2016. This is Brant’s sixth appearance in The Best American Sports Writing. His story in the present volume was guided and edited at Bicycling magazine by Lou Mazzante and Bill Strickland. In March 2016, Zilong Wang, the subject of Brant’s profile, set out by bicycle on a “Journey to the East,” a three-year trek that will take him across the U.S., Eurasia, and mainland China on “a pilgrimage around the globe in service to the ecological and spiritual awakening of our time.” Zilong is chronicling his progress at http://www.journeye.org/.
William Browning is a University of Mississippi graduate. He began his career as a reporter for the North Mississippi Herald in Water Valley, Mississippi. He has worked for newspapers in Wyoming and Florida, mostly covering crime and the military. In 2011 he received an APSE award. His story “A Long Walk’s End” was cited by Longform.org and named a Longreads.com number-one story of the week. He and his wife, Joy, have a dog and two cats.
Matt Calkins has been a sports columnist at the Seattle Times since August 2015. Previously, he was a columnist at the San Diego Union-Tribune, and before that, the Trail Blazers beat writer for the Vancouver Columbian. Born and raised in the San Fernando Valley, Calkins graduated from Loyola Marymount University in 2004.
Kim Cross is a New York Times bestselling author and journalist who sold her Jamis Six-Fifty B mountain bike to pay for the fact-checking of What Stands in a Storm, a narrative nonfiction account of the biggest tornado outbreak on record. Her work has appeared in Outside, Southwest, Garden & Gun, Popular Mechanics, the Tampa Bay Times, and ESPN.com. She teaches advanced reporting at the University of Alabama and cofounded the Archer City Story Center in a one-stoplight Texas town. She will fact-check the hell out of your fishing story (kimhcross.com).
Gretel Ehrlich’s essays, short stories, and poems have appeared in many anthologies, including Best Essays of the Century, Best American Essays, Best Spiritual Writing, Best Travel Writing, and The Nature Reader. Her work has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times op-ed page, the Washington Post, Time, Outside, Audubon, and many other publications. Her books include A Match to the Heart, This Cold Heaven, and Questions of Heaven.
Steve Fainaru is coauthor with his brother, Mark Fainaru-Wada, of the book League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions, and the Battle for Truth. Before joining ESPN as an investigative reporter, he served as a war correspondent for the Washington Post, where he won a Pulitzer Prize in international reporting in 2008.
Mark Fainaru-Wada joined ESPN in November 2007 as an investigative reporter for ESPN’s Enterprise Unit. Previously, at the San Francisco Chronicle, he and his colleague Lance Williams earned a string of national honors—including the George Polk, Edgar A. Poe, Dick Schaap Excellence in Journalism, and Associated Press Sports Editors Awards—for their work on the BALCO steroids case. Fainaru-Wada is coauthor with Williams of Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal That Rocked Professional Sports.
Steve Friedman is the author of four books, coauthor of two, and a two-time finalist for the National Magazine Award in feature writing. He grew up in St. Louis, graduated from Stanford University, and lives in New York City. This is his ninth appearance in The Best American Sports Writing. More at Stevefriedman.net.
Chris Jones worked for Esquire from 2002 until 2016, first as a contributing editor and later as a writer at large. He served the same two men for those 14 years: David Granger, Esquire’s editor in chief, and his deputy, Peter Griffin. They were perfect editors: generous, kind, careful, brave. In January 2016, Granger was fired. This is Chris’s sixth appearance in The Best American Sports Writing, and it will be his last as a writer for Esquire. He wants to thank Granger and Griffin for the chance to see his name on the masthead of his dreams, and so, too, in the pages of this book. Fourteen years is a long time to feel lucky. He will always be grateful beyond measure.
Sam Knight is a journalist living in London. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the Guardian, FT, Grantland, British GQ, and Harper’s.
Michael McKnight has been a reporter and special contributor at Sports Illustrated since 2010. He is the author of Intercepted: The Rise and Fall of NFL Cornerback Darryl Henley (2012).
Michael J. Mooney is on staff at D Magazine and contributes to GQ, ESPN: The Magazine, Outside, Success Magazine, and Popular Mechanics. He is codirector of the annual Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. His stories have appeared in multiple editions of The Best American Sports Writing and Best American Crime Reporting. He lives in Dallas.
Eric Moskowitz is a reporter and features writer for the Boston Globe, where he has worked since 2007. He contributed to the Globe’s Pulitzer Prize–winning coverage of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings and is a two-time finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists. Previously, he worked for the Concord Monitor and the (New Bedford, Massachusetts) Standard-Times. A native of Massachusetts, he collected his first paycheck selling souvenirs outside Fenway Park, and his first paycheck in journalism as a Cape Cod Times intern covering the Cape Cod Baseball League. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, with his wife, Hannah Swartz, an arts administrator.
Henley O’Brien is the pseudonym of a freelance editor who travels widely for work and spends her spare time running, backpacking, and ordering coffees in other languages (often to disappointing effect). She earned her master of philosophy in writing from Trinity College Dublin and currently lives in London.
Brett Popplewell was a reporter for the Toronto Star before joining Sportsnet, where he spent four years as a senior writer. A documentary based on “Stopping the Fight” was produced for Hockey Night in Canada. His first book, the memoir of a mountain climber, is forthcoming. He teaches at Carleton University and lives with his wife in Toronto.
Ken Rodriguez is a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated and SI.com. He is a former sports columnist for the San Antonio Express-News, a former investigative sports writer for the Miami Herald, and a member of the Herald team that won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.
Michael Rosenberg joined Sports Illustrated as a senior writer in 2012 after working at the Detroit Free Press for 13 years, eight of them as a columnist. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book War as They Knew It: Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler, and America in a Time of Unrest. Rosenberg has also worked at the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Sacramento Bee.
A graduate of Marquette University, Steve Rushin is the author of Road Swing, The 34-Ton Bat, and the novel The Pint Man.
Eli Saslow is a reporter at the Washington Post, where, after covering the 2008 presidential campaign, he has chronicled the president’s life inside the White House. He won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting for his yearlong series about food stamps in America. Previously a sportswriter for the Post, he has won multiple awards for news and feature writing. Two of his earlier stories have also appeared in The Best American Sports Writing.
Alexandra Starr is a magazine writer and radio producer living in New York City. In addition to Harper’s, she has contributed to the New York Times Magazine, Slate, and The American Scholar, among other publications. She frequently reports for National Public Radio. Starr reported “American Hustle” when she was an Emerson fellow at the New American Foundation. She has also been a fellow at the Center on Law and Security at New York University Law School; a Milena Jesenska Fellow in Vienna, Austria; a Japan Society Fellow in Tokyo, Japan; and an Organization of American States Fellow in Caracas, Venezuela. Many years ago, she was an editor at the Washington Monthly, and she also did a stint at National Public Radio as Daniel Schorr’s research assistant.
Wright Thompson is a senior writer for ESPN: The Magazine.
Chris Van Leuven has been climbing for 24 years and writing professionally for 10. He lives in Colorado’s Front Range with his girlfriend and their two dogs. Until recently he served as Alpinist magazine’s digital editor. He is now working in public relations and writing his first book.
Don Van Natta Jr. is a senior writer for ESPN: The Magazine and ESPN.com. He joined ESPN in January 2012 after 16 years as a New York Times correspondent based in Washington, London, Miami, and New York. Previously he worked for eight years at the Miami Herald. A member of three Pulitzer Prize–winning teams, Van Natta is the author of First Off the Tee and the coauthor of Her Way—both New York Times bestsellers—and Wonder Girl. He lives in Miami with his wife, Lizette Alvarez, who is a Times correspondent, and their two daughters. This is his third appearance in The Best American Sports Writing.
L. Jon Wertheim is the executive editor of Sports Illustrated, as well as a senior writer for the magazine. This is his fifth appearance in The Best American Sports Writing.
A native of Anchorage, Alaska, Seth Wickersham is a senior writer at ESPN: The Magazine, where he has worked since graduating from the University of Missouri. He is part of a staff that has twice won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, Alison Overholt, and their daughter, Maddie. He is credited as playing himself in the 2014 movie Draft Day, though the scene was cut before it was shot.
Chris Wiewiora is from Orlando, Florida, where he used to skateboard drainage ditches before graduating from the University of Central Florida. He earned an MFA in creative writing and environment at Iowa State University. His nonfiction has been published in Stymie: Journal of Sports & Literature and Sports Literate. Read more at www.chriswiewiora.com.