Photo: Alton Christensen

Dave Zirin

Sports Writer

Dave Zirin writes about the politics of sports for The Nation and is the magazine’s first sports writer. Zirin has earned numerous accolades for his reporting including the Sport in Society and Northeastern University School of Journalism’s excellence in sports journalism award. He was also named one of UTNE Reader’s 50 visionaries who are changing our world. Zirin hosts Sirius XM Radio’s popular weekly show Edge of Sports Radio.

His most recent book is the acclaimed Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down, which Christine Brennan of USA Today described as “the perfect book for our time in sports.” Sports Illustrated called it “provocative,” adding: “It will make you think about what we’re really seeing when we watch the games we love.”

Zirin is the co-author of The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment that Changed the World, which was nominated for a NAACP image award. He also wrote Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games We Love. Author Naomi Klein called the book “an original and scathing look at how America works.”

Zirin is the author of A People’s History of Sports in the United States, part of historian Howard Zinn’s People’s History series for The New Press. That contribution forms the basis of a documentary co-written and narrated by Zirin called Not Just a Game: Power, Politics and American Sports, produced by the Media Education Foundation. His second documentary, Race, Power and Politics in American Sports, was also produced by the MEF.

A native New Yorker, Zirin lives near Washington, D.C.