Steve Almond (born October 27, 1966)is an American short-story writer, essayist and author of ten books, three of which are self-published.
Almond was raised in Palo Alto, California, graduated from Henry M. Gunn High School and received his undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University. He spent seven years as a newspaper reporter, mostly in El Paso and at the Miami New Times.
Almond lives in Arlington, Massachusetts with his wife and three children.
Almond's 2014 book Against Football, which documents his growing disillusionment with American football, derived from two pieces written for The New York Times. Almond's second book, Candyfreak (2005) was a New York Times Best Seller and won the American Library Association Alex Award and was named the Booksense Adult Nonfiction Book of the Year.
Almond's books have been published in half a dozen foreign countries and translated into German, Dutch, Spanish, and Croatian. He has published more than 150 stories in magazines such as Tin House, Playboy, Zoetrope, and Ploughshares. His story "Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched" was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2010 and has been optioned for film by Spilt Milk Entertainment.
Two of his stories were published in The Pushcart Prize. His essays and journalism have appeared in venues such as The New York Times Magazine, GQ, The Wall Street Journal, Poets & Writers, and Real Simple. His stories and essays have appeared in dozens of anthologies. Almond also reviews books for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times. He regularly teaches at GrubStreet in Boston, at the Sanibel Writer's Conference, and the Tin House Writer's Conference.
Almond teaches non-fiction to fellows in the Nieman Fellowship program, based in Cambridge, MA.
Almond served as adjunct professor in creative writing at Boston College for five years until publishing an open letter of resignation in The Boston Globe on May 12, 2006, in which he explained that his resignation was intended to protest the selection of Condoleezza Rice as the college's 2006 commencement guest speaker. He later appeared on the Hannity & Colmes show on Fox News to discuss his decision. Almond is a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine's Riff section, and to the literary website The Rumpus, where he writes frequently about the intersection of morality and politics titled "The Week in Greed."
After a decade of working with traditional publishers, Almond has self-published three books in recent years and become an outspoken advocate of self-publishing, which he has written about extensively in the Los Angeles Times, Poets & Writers, and The Rumpus.
Steve was a contributing writer to Alarm Clock Theatre Company's Elliot Norton Award-winning play PS Page Me Later based on selections from Found Magazine.
Almond is a regular correspondent on NPR's Here & Now and on WGBH, both based in Boston. On October 27, 2011, Almond appeared as a guest on the podcast WTF with Marc Maron. Almond also hosted a live interview podcast series with Hallelujah the Hills band leader Ryan Walsh entitled "This Has Been A Disaster – Thanks For Having Us." During an interview with Newsmax TV on January 28, 2014, Almond encouraged the public to join him in boycotting the Super Bowl because of the risks involved to the players, with respect to brain injuries. Almond co-hosted the Dear Sugars podcast for four years with Cheryl Strayed.