Dan Shaughnessy is an award-winning columnist for the Boston Globe and the author of several sports books, including The Curse of the Bambino , a best-selling classic. Seven times Shaughnessy has been voted one of America’s top ten sports columnists by Associated Press Sports Editors and named Massachusetts Sportswriter of the Year. He has appeared on Good Morning America , The Today Show , The Early Show , CNN, Nightline , NPR, Imus in the Morning , ESPN, HBO, and many others. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts.
Robert Lipsyte is a legendary sports reporter, award-winning young adult novelist and an outspoken critic of the sports world. Lipsyte has often expressed his controversial opinion that the nation's fixation on competitive athletics is detrimental. He feels that sports should be recreational, not an industry that offers the often false hope of stardom. As a young reporter, Lipsyte covered boxing for The New York Times. He drew on this background for his first book, "The Contender" (1967), a highly acclaimed coming-of-age story in which an orphaned teenager matures through the training discipline of boxing. In 1971, Lipsyte left the Times to concentrate on writing books. His other sports… books for young people include "Free To Be Muhammad Ali" (1978) and the "Superstar Lineup" series documenting the lives of famous sports heroes. The author's other novels for adolescents include the semi-autobiographical "Fifties Trilogy: One Fat Summer" (1977), "Summer Rules" (1981) and "Summerboy" (1982). Lipsyte has also written for adults in such books as "SportsWorld: An American Dreamland" (1975) and for television, notably "Saturday Night With Howard Cosell". He received an Emmy Award for hosting the PBS show "The Eleventh Hour"" (1990). Robert Michael Lipsyte was born January 16, 1938 in New York City and earned an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia in 1959. He has been a radio commentator, a television news correspondent, and a journalism teacher. He successfully fought cancer in the late 1970's. Lipsyte's career has come full circle; he once again is writing a sports column for The New York Times and books for young adults. "The Chief" (1993) is the long-awaited sequel to "The Contender".
Ann Patchett was born on December 2, 1963. She received the Orange Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2002 for her novel Bel Canto. Her other novels include The Patron Saint of Liars, Taft, The Magician's Assistant, and State of Wonder. She has also written several nonfiction works including Truth and Beauty: A Friendship, The Getaway Car, The Bookshop Strikes Back, and This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage.Harvey Araton is New York Times feature writer and sports columnist. Prior to working at the Times he was a sports reporter and columnist at the New York Daily News, a sports reporter for the New York Post, and he also worked at the Staten Island Advance as a sports… reporter, night sports editor, city side reporter and copyboy. Araton is the author or co-author of the books: Driving Mr. Yogi: Yogi Berra, Ron Guidry, and Baseball's Greatest Gifts (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012); When the Garden Was Eden: Clyde, the Captain, Dollar Bill, and the Glory Days of the New York Knicks (Harper, 2011); Crashing the Borders: How Basketball Won the World and Lost Its Soul at Home (Free Press, 2005); Alive & Kicking (When Soccer Moms Take The Field And Change Their Lives Forever (Simon & Schuster, 2001); Money Players (Inside The New NBA) (Pocket Books, 1997); The Selling of the Green: The Financial Rise and Moral Decline of the Boston Celtics, Harper Collins, 1992. Araton's work has appeared in numerous magazines including the New York Times Magazine, GQ Magazine, ESPN Magazine, Sport Magazine, and Basketball Weekly.