Bill Konigsberg Novels

November 19, 2017 in - 306 views

Bill lives in just outside of Phoenix with his longtime partner, Chuck. They have two Australian Labradoodles who complete them.

Mabel, the older sister, can jump very high and head a ball like a champion soccer player.

Her brother Buford is a bit of a rascal.

When Bill is not busy talking about his dogs as if they were his children, he writes fiction, which is his dream job. Except when it makes him crazy and impossible to live with, which is about 41 percent of the time.

He is also the Assistant Professor of Practice at the Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University, where he coordinates and teaches in the Your Novel Year online certificate program.

Bill has a husband, Chuck. Bill and Chuck have so many anniversaries due to the wacky marriage laws that keep changing that they often forget them. In case you wish to send presents, they started dating on Dec. 24, 2003, they had a civil union in Vermont on Sept. 16, 2006, and they got married in New York on Nov. 16, 2013.

Bill has four published books: "The Porcupine of Truth," "Openly Straight," "Out of the Pocket." and "Honestly Ben." The first three have won major awards, which is something he thinks about mostly when he can’t seem to write a sentence. Then, he thinks, “How the hell am I an award-winning author? Was this some sort of conspiracy his mom set up, like telling kids to pretend to be his friend in elementary school (did not happen) or telling the counselors at camp that he’s ‘a little sensitive’ (may have happened) or buying ten zillion copies of his not-so-well selling debut novel (definitely happened)? "Out of the Pocket" won the 2009 Lambda Literary Award, "Openly Straight" won the 2013 Sid Fleischmann Award for Humor, and "The Porcupine of Truth" won the 2016 Stonewall Book Award and PEN Center USA Literary Award. So if she did dole out cash for those awards, she’s probably broke now, and he thanks  her for it.

Before Bill was a fiction writer (and long before he ever referred to himself in the third person), he was a sports writer. As a sports writer and editor for The Associated Press from 2005-08, he covered the New York Mets and his weekly fantasy baseball column appeared in newspapers across the country, from the New York Daily News to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In May of 2001, while working for ESPN.com, he came out on the front page of the website in an article entitled “Sports World Still a Struggle for Gays.” That article won him a GLAAD Media Award the following year.

As an openly gay guy working in sports, he spoke at countless venues across the country on what it’s like to be a gay person in the world of sports. He has written for The New York Times, New York Daily News, North Jersey Herald and News and Denver Post, to name a few. His work has also appeared in Out Magazine. In 2011, his coming out was named the #64 moment in gay sports history by the website Outsports.com. His story was included as a chapter in the book “Jocks 2: Coming Out to Play” by Dan Woog.

Ancient History:
Upon graduating from Columbia University in 1994, Bill become known internationally for simulating out the remainder of that year’s strike-shortened baseball season and writing about it for the New York Daily News, San Francisco Chronicle and Miami Herald. Coverage of his simulated season was seen on NBC World News Tonight, Dateline NBC, CNN, and the Tokyo Broadcasting System. His world series, won by the New York Yankees in what many believe to be the greatest fix since the Black Sox scandal of 1919, was dramatized on Dateline NBC using actual college players.

Bill Konigsberg