Frank Bruni

Frank Anthony Bruni (born October 31, 1964) is an American journalist. He was the chief restaurant critic of the New York Times, from 2004 to 2009. In June 2011, he was named an Op-Ed columnist for the newspaper—its first openly gay one. He is the author of two bestselling books, Born Round, a memoir about his family's love of food and his own struggles with overeating, and Ambling Into History, about George W. Bush.

Biography

Bruni graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1986 with a B.A. in English. He was a Morehead Scholar and was a staff writer for the student paper, The Daily Tar Heel.^[1] Bruni graduated second in his class with a master of science degree in journalism from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where he also won a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship.

Straight out of Columbia, Bruni joined the staff of the New York Post and then moved on to the Detroit Free Press, where he wrote on a variety of topics, including the Persian Gulf War and movie reviews. In 1995, Bruni took a job with the New York Times as a metropolitan reporter and often wrote for the Times' Sunday magazine and for Sunday Arts. In 1998, he was assigned to the Washington, D.C. bureau, where he covered Capitol Hill and Congress, before being sent on the campaign trail to follow then-Texas Governor George W. Bush. He then covered the White House for the first eight months of the Bush administration and served as the Washington-based staff writer for Sunday magazine. In July 2002, he was promoted to the Rome bureau chief. Two years later, he became the Times’ restaurant critic. After five years in that position, he returned briefly to the magazine before becoming an op-ed columnist.

Bruni’s book Ambling into History chronicles his time covering Bush’s campaign. His other books include not only Born Round but also A Gospel of Shame: Children, Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church.^[2]

He is an avid travel writer whose work has appeared in the "Travel" section of the Times and in Conde Nast Traveler.

A frequent commentator on television news shows, especially on CNN and MSNBC, Bruni also served as a guest judge on Top Chef and appeared briefly in the movie Julie & Julia. And in the spring of 2014, he taught a journalism seminar at Princeton University.^[3]

In March 2015, Grand Central Publishing, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, is due to release Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania, in which he examines many parents' and kids' obsession with elite colleges; explodes the myth that getting into a highly selective school is key to success later in life; and discusses better ways to think about higher education and to get the most out of it.^[4] In an endorsement of the book, the writer Paul Tough called it "an inspiring call for a wiser, saner approach to American higher education."

While on the staff of the Free Press, Bruni was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing for a portrait of a convicted pedophile.^[5] In 1996, he and three colleagues won the George Polk Award for metropolitan reporting for their coverage of the child-abuse death of Elisa Izquierdo.^[6] And he was awarded the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Newspaper Columnist in 2012 and 2013.^[7]

Personal

Bruni is openly gay.^[8] He has struggled with his eating and bulimia.^[9][10]

References

Bibliography

• Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania, 2015
• Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater, 2009
• Ambling Into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush, 2002
• A Gospel of Shame: Children, Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church, 1993 with Elinor Burkett

External links

• Biography: Frank Bruni - New York Times.
• Recent and archived news articles by Frank Bruni of The New York Times.
• Diner's Journal - Dining & Wine - New York Times Blog
• Born Round
• Interview with Frank Bruni on LITTORAL (2010).