Sports – Vol. 1 Brooklyn

Watching the World Cup, Hemon on Soccer in Hand

June 17, 2014 No Comments

Aleksandar Hemon The Matters of Life, Death, and More: Writing on Soccer Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 96 p. I spent yesterday evening at a crowded bar in the West Village watching the United States play Ghana in the World Cup. Four years earlier, I’d spent a Saturday afternoon in a crowded bar in Williamsburg, also watching the United States play Ghana in the World Cup. Last night, a space full of supporters of the American team experienced a sort of […]

Featured, Interviews, Sports

Covering Soccer in Style: An Interview with Howler Magazine’s George Quraishi

May 29, 2014 1 Comment

Since its first issue debuted, I’ve been a fan of the work done by the magazine Howler, which contains some of the best writing about soccer you’re likely to read. Articles in Howler have covered everything from the evolution of midfielder Michael Bradley to the reminiscences of goalkeeper Justin Bryant about playing in a host of domestic leagues over the years to the wrenching story of an international match played in the horrific aftermath of the 1973 Chilean coup d’état. To […]

Books, Sports

An Excerpt from Caryn Rose’s “A Whole New Ballgame”

April 1, 2014 No Comments

Today, we’re pleased to present an excerpt from Caryn Rose’s new novel, A Whole New Ballgame, out now on Till Victory Press. As Rose writes regularly about baseball, the fact that her novel explores that world is not a surprise; it follows a summer in the life of Laurie Nicholson, a young woman whose travels take her across the country on a ballpark-centric road trip.

Books, Sports

Jonathan Wilson’s “Kick and Run” and the Golden Age of Soccer Writing

December 3, 2013 No Comments

Jonathan Wilson’s Kick and Run is subtitled “Memoir With Soccer Ball,” which serves as a deeply accurate description of what one will find inside. Wilson’s life has taken him from his native London to Israel to the United States, where he currently resides. The book covers his family’s history, his own fondness for American literature, and the ways in which he has felt like an outsider, encompassing questions of culture, nationality, geography and aesthetics.. The through line here is Wilson’s passion […]

Books, Sports

On the Retired Athlete Profile

February 19, 2013 No Comments

If you aren’t already one of the thousands (and thousands and thousands…) of people that have read Wright Thompson’s ESPN profile on Michael Jordan dealing with his post-NBA life, it is definitely worth your time if you’re a basketball fan or not. Thompson doesn’t sugarcoat the fact that Jordan is a pretty awful person (“He can be a breathtaking asshole: self-centered, bullying and cruel. That’s the ugly side of greatness. He’s a killer, in the Darwinian sense of the word, immediately sensing […]

Books, Columns, Poetry in Motion, Sports

Poetry in Motion – The Literature of Basketball, Weeks 3 & 4: Meet the Houston Rockets’ New Starter, Donald Barthelme

December 6, 2012 1 Comment

Despite a win-loss record of 9-8, the Houston Rockets this week emerged as the internet’s new favorite team. On Yahoo’s blog Ball Don’t Lie, Eric Freeman has devoted serious e-ink and cautious optimism to the Rockets, hyping their big off-season acquisition James Harden as “if not a bona fide superstar, then at least an excellent player who could be a first option on a pretty good playoff team.” Bethlehem Shoals asked on Twitter last week if the Rockets were this […]

Books, Columns, Poetry in Motion, Sports

Poetry in Motion: The Literature of Basketball, Weeks 1 and 2 – Mike and Phil and the Other Mike and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

November 14, 2012 1 Comment

Pump up the tiny plastic bubble on your sneakers and unleash theme weaver John Tesh from his crypt: the National Basketball Association’s sixty-sixth season has begun. With it begins a new recurring feature at Vol. 1 entitled Poetry in Motion, chronicling “the week that was” in hoops news through the slam-dunked lens of literature.

Books, Sports

Steve Sabol and Gridiron Poetry

September 19, 2012 No Comments

I never really gave all that much thought into how much of an impact watching certain NFL Films productions had on me when I was growing up. They were gritty, melodramatic, and helped turn me into the fan I am today. They were also poetic, much of that due to the son of NFL Films founder Ed Sabol’s son, Steve Sabol.