Steve Rushin

After graduating from Bloomington Kennedy High School in 1984 and Marquette University in 1988, Rushin joined the staff of Sports Illustrated. Over the next 19 years, he filed stories from Greenland, India, Indonesia, the Arctic Circle and other farflung locales, as well as the usual nearflung locale to which sportswriters are routinely posted.

His first novel, The Pint Man, was published by Doubleday in 2010. The Los Angeles Times called the book “Engaging, clever and often wipe-your-eyes funny.”

Rushin gave the commencement address at Marquette in 2007 and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters for “his unique gift of documenting the human condition through his writing.” In 2006, he was named the National Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association.

A collection of his sports and travel writing—The Caddie Was a Reindeer—was published by Grove Atlantic in 2005 and was named a semifinalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor. The Denver Post suggested, “If you don’t end up dropping The Caddie Was a Reindeer during fits of uncontrollable merriment, it is likely you need immediate medical attention.”

A four-time finalist for the National Magazine Award, Rushin has had his work anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing, The Best American Travel Writing and The Best American Magazine Writing collections. His essays have appeared in Time magazine and The New York Times. He writes a weekly column for SI.com and is a What TK to Golf Digest.

His first book, Road Swing, published in 1998, was named one of the “Best Books of the Year” by Publishers Weekly and one of the “Top 100 Sports Books of All Time” by Sports Illustrated.

Rushin’s next book, a work of nonfiction called The Baseball Grenade, will be published by Little, Brown in 2013.

He and his wife, Rebecca Lobo, have four children and live in Connecticut.