Buzz Bissinger is the author of six nonfiction books: Friday Night Lights (a New York Times number-one bestseller), A Prayer for the City (a NYT Notable Book), Three Nights in August (a NYT bestseller), Shooting Stars, The Mosquito Bowl, and Father’s Day, a story about his relationship with his son Zachary.
Bissinger has been a reporter for some of the nation’s most prestigious newspapers; a magazine writer with published work in Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, Time, The New Republic, and Sports Illustrated; and a coproducer and writer for the ABC television drama NYPD Blue. Two of his works were made into the critically acclaimed films Friday Night Lights and Shattered Glass. Friday Night Lights also served as the inspiration for the television series of the same name. His teleplay and screenwriting work includes collaborations with directors and/or writers Alan Pakula, Billy Bob Thornton, Greg Hoblit, Todd Field, and Tim Kring.
He has been a contributing editor at Vanity Fair magazine since 1996 and has written about such subjects as the systematic killings of gays by white teenagers in Texas; O. J. Simpson detective Mark Fuhrman; film director John Ford; Joe DiMaggio; the tragic killing of a college baseball player in a small town in Oklahoma by bored teenagers; and the saga of a six-million-dollar stolen Stradivarius. His Vanity Fair article “Gone Like the Wind,” about the saga of Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro, was named a finalist in feature writing by the American Society of Magazine Editors in 2008.
His awards include the Pulitzer Prize, the Livingston Award, the American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award, the National Headliners Award, and a Nieman fellowship from Harvard University, among others.
