Will Leitch

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Will Leitch (born October 10, 1975 in Mattoon, Illinois) is a writer based in New York City and the founding editor of the Gawker Media sports blog Deadspin. Leitch is a contributor to The New York Times, New York and Slate, and has published three books, Catch, a novel, Life as a Loser, a memoir and God Save The Fan, a book of sports essays.

In January 2003, Leitch became a founding editor of 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.

In September 2005, Leitch became the founding editor of Deadspin. Deadspin is the most popular independent sports blog on the web^[1]^{[not in citation given]} and has been profiled in Sports Illustrated^[2]^[3]^[4] and The New York Times^[5].

Leitch grew up in Mattoon, Illinois, which is also the setting of Catch. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. While there, he was an editor at the University's paper, the Daily Illini. He now lives in Brooklyn.

One of Leitch's first glances with fame came when he appeared on one of the early episodes 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 fiancee (a fact that co-host Jimmy Kimmel included in Leitch's introduction).

During the 2007 NCAA Tournament, Leitch wrote a daily column for TimesSelect, the paid section of The New York Times.^[6] During the 2007 baseball playoffs, Leitch wrote a daily column for The New York Times' Web site.^[7]

Leitch was featured in the February issue of Penthouse Magazine. He also was famously accosted by Pulitzer-Prize winning author Buzz Bissinger on an April 2008 episode of Costas Now.

Leitch announced on June 5, 2008 that he will be leaving Deadspin by the end of the month to become an associate editor of New York Magazine.