Will Leitch

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Will Leitch
BornWilliam F. Leitch
(1975-10-10) October 10, 1975 (age 48)
Mattoon, Illinois, U.S.
Alma materUniversity of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Notable worksThe Black Table, Deadspin

William F. Leitch (born October 10, 1975 in Mattoon, Illinois) is an American writer and the founding editor of the Gawker Media former sports blog Deadspin. Leitch is a national correspondent for MLB.com, a contributing editor at New York, critic at Grierson & Leitch, contributor to The New York Times, GQ, The Washington Post and NBC News and has published six books, including Catch, a novel, Life as a Loser, a memoir, God Save the Fan, a book of sports essays and Are We Winning?, a book about fatherhood and baseball.

His fifth book, the novel How Lucky, was published by Harper in May 2021[1] and received an endorsement from author Stephen King.[2] His sixth book, the novel The Time Has Come, was published by Harper in May 2023.

Background

Leitch was born and raised in

Daily Illini. He now lives in Athens, Georgia
.

One of Leitch's first brushes with fame came when he appeared on an early episode of Win Ben Stein's Money. In an excerpt from Life as a Loser, published on Blacktable.com, Leitch describes the experience of taping this episode within hours of being dumped by his fiancée (a fact that co-host Jimmy Kimmel included in Leitch's introduction).

Career

IronMinds.com

Life as a Loser appeared on Ironminds, an online magazine that existed from 1999-2002.[3]

The Black Table

In January 2003, Leitch became a founding editor of the website The Black Table, with Eric Gillin,

A.J. Daulerio and Aileen Gallagher. His Life As A Loser column ran online for five years and was ultimately compiled into a book of the same title, with a foreword written by Tom Perrotta
.

Deadspin

In September 2005, Leitch became the founding editor of Deadspin, which quickly became one of the most popular independent sports blogs on the web, and has been profiled in Sports Illustrated[4][5][6] and The New York Times.[7] Leitch announced on June 5, 2008 that he would leave Deadspin at the end of the month to become a contributing editor at New York magazine. Deadspin would later shut down after an ownership dispute, and its writers would create Defector Media.

Other work

During the

2007 NCAA Tournament, Leitch wrote a daily column for TimesSelect, the paid section of The New York Times.[8] During the 2007 baseball playoffs, Leitch wrote a daily column for The New York Times' web site.[9]

Leitch was also the host of The Will Leitch Show for

Leitch also cohosts Waitin' Since Last Saturday, a podcast about

Vulture. Leitch also cohosts the St. Louis Cardinals podcast Seeing Red with Bernie Miklasz
.

Personal life

Leitch lives in Athens, Georgia with his wife, designer Alexa Stevenson, and their two sons, William and Wynn.

Books authored

References

  1. ^ Haylock, Zoe (2020-06-09). "Harper Acquires New Novel From Deadspin Founder Will Leitch". Vulture. Retrieved 2021-09-08.
  2. ^ "Will Leitch on Instagram: "I've seen worse chyrons."".
  3. ^ Life As A Loser, Ironminds.com, at Archive.org
  4. ^ "Video". CNN. December 19, 2005.
  5. ^ "Video". CNN. March 27, 2006.
  6. ^ "Video". CNN. February 25, 2008.
  7. ^ Shattuck, Kathryn. "New York Times articles about Will Leitch". The New York Times.
  8. ^ "In the Paint and Off the Court at the N.C.A.A. Tournament". The New York Times.
  9. ^ "A Fan Keeps Score". The New York Times.
  10. ^ "Watch The Will Leitch Show | Prime Video". www.amazon.com. Retrieved 2021-09-08.

External links