Literary Sports Journalism: Beyond the Boundaries

This book delivers a powerful argument for the centrality of sport in culture, exploring how fine sports writing bestows meaning upon the human world. Literary Sports Journalism: Beyond the Boundaries explores the multiple and fertile interconnections between sports writing and mainstream creative writing, including the works of Ernest Hemingway, Hunter S. Thompson, Joyce Carol Oates and Martin Amis. In so doing, it delivers a reappraisal of a number of key writers. As such, the book aims to unite journalism studies with both literary analysis and philosophy. At root it is an inquiry into aesthetics: an exploration of the beauty of words, the beauty (and ugliness) of sport, and the distinctive beauty that arises when words are used to capture sport. Tom Bradshaw argues that it is the writing around sport rather than about sport that is often the most profound, perceptive, and beautiful, and which tells us much about what it is to be human. Tom Bradshaw is an academic and journalist, based in Cheltenham, UK, but working internationally. As an award-winning sports journalist, he has reported across the globe, including spells in Japan and France. His journalism has appeared in a wide range of publications, including The Times (London), Guardian/Observer and Times Literary Supplement. He appears regularly on BBC radio. Tom is a passionate advocate of press freedom and is joint editor of Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. He has worked as a consultant to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office on media ethics issues abroad. Endorsement: “In this beautifully written book, Tom Bradshaw shows us that the best sports writing is not about sport at all. Rather, the best sports writing conveys something profound about what it is to be human and what it means to be part of a world where watching others compete, excel, and fail is a vicarious encounter that captures our soul. As Bradshaw explains, good sports writing creates an illusion about an illusion - using the background of sport to build a world where the trivial becomes the magnificent.” Emily Ryall, Reader in Applied Philosophy, University of Gloucestershire “A timely, welcome and necessary addition to the discourse of literary journalism.” Peter Auf Der Heyde, Southampton Solent University