If you’re reading this page, you apparently want to know about me. So here goes:

I’m a Midwesterner by heart, and a Los Angeleno by choice. Born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I grew up working as an industrial painter, lawncare worker, and expert floor sweeper at my dad’s manufacturing company outside Detroit. In high school, I basically wanted to be Bob Dylan, and I wrote an album of folk music—but I didn’t have the guts to send it out into the world. In college, I wrote a senior thesis of short stories and played on two nationally-ranked soccer teams: Wake Forest University and The College of Wooster. After college, I worked as a barista in Oxford, England; a machinist in Belleville, Michigan; and a soccer coach in New York City and Ann Arbor. Then I decided it was time to get real about life. So I decided to become a writer.

I earned an MFA from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, where I developed a daily writing routine, taught English, learned to ride a road bike at a pedal cadence of 90 rpm over hilly terrain, and fell in love with the work of Pete Dexter, Patricia Highsmith, and the great Russian novelists. In fact, I became so obsessed with Russian Literature, I studied Eastern European history at SIU. I was even placed into a study abroad program in Latvia, but life got in the way. After grad school, I supported my wife and young children through the Great Recession working as a copywriter in Chicago, but then we fled the cold and snow of the City of Big Shoulders for the warmth and sun and mountains of the City of Angeles.

I built a journalism career out of a few clips in a small-town weekly newspaper and a soccer writing blog, and went on to be a Contributing Writer for ESPN: The Magazine, and write for The New York Times, Grantland.com, Los Angeles Magazine, and other outlets. I then turned to the supposedly lucrative field of screenwriting, earning a certificate in TV Writing from UCLA, winning school’s the Pilot Award, and enduring years of rejection.

But as Denzel Washington says, "If you don't fail, you're not even trying." So I pride myself on having not only TV pilots rejected, but nearly every form of writing: novels, magazine articles, non-fiction books, podcasts, and documentaries. I haven’t had a feature film rejected, but there’s still time ;) And I’m still pissed about Grantland killing my review of a 2013 Depeche Mode concert in Los Angeles.

In 2024, I formed a production company GET BACK UP, to bring to life meaningful stories of athletes and teams whose work on and off the field impacts, informs, and inspires global culture and society. The company’s name was inspired by a famous Randy “Macho Man” Savage quote from a 1992 interview on Arsenio Hall: “Nobody likes a quitter. Nobody said life was easy. So if you get knocked, take the standing eight count, get back up, and fight again.”

After enduring a divorce that holds the record for longest ever this side of a Kardashian, I am a single father to three wonderful children and one wild Australian Shepherd, and I divide my time between Los Angeles, California, and Leelanau County, Michigan. I drink my coffee black, drive a 1994 Toyota 4Runner, and when I’m not writing, working, reading, or doing dishes, I’m usually walking my dog, running intervals, lifting weights, or playing soccer—but never all four at the same time.

My favorite sign off is Go get ‘em. So: 

Go get ‘em.

--Andrew