| Rick Bragg | |
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Rick Bragg at the 2008 Texas Book Festival |
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| Born | July 26, 1959 Piedmont, Alabama, United States |
| Occupation | Author Journalist |
Rick Bragg (born July 26, 1959) is an American author and journalist known for his non-fiction books, especially those on his family in Alabama. Bragg won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1996 for his work at The New York Times.
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Bragg was born in the small city of Piedmont in northeastern Alabama and grew up in the small community of Possum Trot near Jacksonville. He credited his ability to write to listening to his family tell stories. He was raised primarily by his mother, as his father was an alcoholic and was almost never home. His relatives were also very involved in his young life, and greatly influenced his personal and emotional development.
Bragg worked at several newspapers before joining the New York Times in 1994. He covered murders and unrest in Haiti as a metro reporter, then wrote about the Oklahoma City bombing, the Jonesboro killings, the Susan Smith trial and more as a national correspondent based in Atlanta. He later became the paper's Miami bureau chief just in time for Elián González's arrival and the international controversy surrounding the Cuban boy. Bragg won the Pulitzer for his work.
Bragg has authored five books: All Over but the Shoutin, Ava's Man, The Prince of Frogtown, I Am a Soldier Too: The Jessica Lynch Story, the authorized biography of American POW Jessica Lynch, and The Most They Ever Had.
Arguably his most famous book, "All Over but the Shoutin" tells the story of Bragg's childhood in Alabama, his rise to being a notable journalist, his personal struggles and the stories of the people he cares about. The book pays special attention to Bragg's struggles with his abusive alcoholic father, and the story of his mother who raised Bragg and his two brothers on her own. A powerful memoir, the book is credited with bringing Bragg his initial fame as a writer, and remains his most famous book to this day.
On May 29, 2003, after being given a two-week suspension for writing a story that used some research from a stringer,[1] Bragg resigned in protest from the Times.[2] The story which sparked the controversy was a story Bragg wrote about Florida Gulf Coast oystermen. He wrote a narrative first person story of how he experienced oystermen culture. Bragg spent a day in Apalachicola and used his experience, along with research and interviews from a stringer who was working with Bragg for the summer. Bragg's defense—that it is common for Times correspondents to slip in and out of cities to "get the dateline" while relying on the work of stringers, researchers, interns and clerks—sparked "more passionate disagreement than the clear-cut fraud and plagiarism committed by fellow reporter Jayson Blair."[3]
He has taught writing in colleges and in newspaper newsrooms and now works as a writing professor at the University of Alabama's journalism program in its College of Communications and Information Sciences.
His 2008 book, The Prince of Frogtown, explores his father's life in Bragg's hometown of Jacksonville, Alabama.
Besides winning a Pulitzer Prize, he has received more than 50 writing awards in 20 years, including the prestigious American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award twice. In 1992, he was awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University.