Stefan Fatsis
{{Short description|American journalist (born 1963)}}
{{Distinguish|Stephan Pastis}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=January 2025}}
{{Infobox writer
| name = Stefan Fatsis
| image = Stefan Fatsis.jpg
| image_size = 200px
| caption = Fatsis at a reading of A Few Seconds of Panic in San Francisco, 2008
| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1963|4|1}}
| occupation = Author, journalist
| nationality = American
| spouse = Melissa Block
| signature = Stefan Fatsis signature (cropped).jpg
}}
Stefan Fatsis ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|s|t|ɛ|f|ən|_|ˈ|f|æ|t|s|ᵻ|s}} {{respell|STEF|ən|_|FAT|siss}}; born April 1, 1963) is an American author and journalist. He regularly appears as a guest on National Public Radio's All Things Considered daily radio news program{{cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/people/134022615/stefan-fatsis|title=Stefan Fatsis |accessdate=2011-06-09|work=National Public Radio|publisher=NPR}} and as a panelist on Slate's sports podcast Hang Up and Listen. He is a former staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal.{{cite web|url=http://www.asja.org/wc/2006/2006key.php|title=Saturday Keynote Speaker Stefan Fatsis|accessdate=2011-06-09|archive-date=2011-07-24|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110724134832/http://www.asja.org/wc/2006/2006key.php|url-status=dead}}
Biography
Fatsis grew up in Pelham, New York. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1985 with a degree in American civilization. He was a staff writer for the Daily Pennsylvanian as an undergraduate. From 1985 to 1994 he was a reporter for The Associated Press in Athens, Greece; Philadelphia; Boston; and New York. He wrote about sports for The Wall Street Journal from 1995 to 2006.
Fatsis is the author of three books: Wild and Outside: How a Renegade Minor League Revived the Spirit of Baseball in America's Heartland (1995); Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players (2001), about the subculture of tournament Scrabble, in which Fatsis immersed himself as a player; and A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL (2008). That book was published in paperback with the abbreviated title A Few Seconds of Panic: A Sportswriter Plays in the NFL (2009). Fatsis trained as a placekicker and spent the summer of 2006 as a member of the Denver Broncos during the team's training camp. Similarly, he has written that he "embedded at Merriam as a lexicographer-in-training and drafted or identified more than 100 potential entries" for the firm's dictionary.{{cite web| url = https://slate.com/culture/2022/11/scrabble-dictionary-seventh-edition-new-words-merriam-webster.html| title = The Last Real American Dictionary| last = Fatsis| first = Stefan| date = Nov 28, 2022| website = slate.com| publisher = The Slate Group| access-date = 2024-07-31}}
Fatsis's work also appears in several anthologies: Top of the Order: 25 Writers Pick Their Favorite Baseball Player of All Time (April 2010), The Final Four of Everything (2009), Anatomy of Baseball (2008), The Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. 2 (2008) and The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything (2007). He also writes or has written for The New York Times, the New York Times
He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, former All Things Considered co-host Melissa Block, and their daughter, Chloe Fatsis, who is also a tournament Scrabble player.{{cite news|title=Weddings; Melissa Block, Stefan Fatsis|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/03/style/weddings-melissa-block-stefan-fatsis.html|accessdate=26 May 2012|newspaper=The New York Times|date=March 3, 2002|quote=Mr. Fatsis proposed last September over a four-hour, seven-course lunch at L'Arpège, a busy Paris restaurant. As the couple finished dessert and lingered over tea, Mr. Fatsis pulled out a bag containing a pair of Scrabble racks and two sets of tiles, which he then arranged in alphabetical order before Ms. Block.}}
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
{{commons category|Stefan Fatsis}}
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20080626105650/http://www.stefanfatsis.com/ Stefan Fatsis's website ]
- {{Twitter}}
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20070927223922/http://www.scrabble-assoc.com/cgi-bin/player.pl?surname=Fatsis&given=Stefan Stefan Fatsis's profile page (National Scrabble Association)]
- {{cross-tables player|pid=2858}}
- Lindsay, Drew. "[http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/people/8419.html Stefan Fatsis: Inside a Player's Mind]", Washingtonian, June 1, 2008.
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fatsis, Stefan}}
Category:The Wall Street Journal people
Category:American Public Media
Category:American Scrabble players
Category:Journalists from Washington, D.C.
Category:The Daily Pennsylvanian people
Category:Place of birth missing (living people)
Category:American writers of Greek descent
Category:People from Pelham, New York
Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers