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Parents, alumni, and students hear Friday Night Lights author and discuss book this Friday
Apr 17, 2002 8:00 AM
By Stefan Eady - Faculty
All members of the Darlington community are invited to hear Buzz Bissinger, one of the nation’s most honored and distinguished journalists and author, talk about his controversial book, Friday Night Lights, 9 a.m., Friday, April 19, 2002, in the Van Es Arena of the Huffman Memorial Athletic Center. Following his formal presentation, students, faculty, parents, and alumni will attend 22 breakout sessions around the Upper School campus to discuss the book. The sessions will be led by Darlington faculty.
Parents do not need to RSVP to attend Bissinger's talk in the arena; however, if they wish to participate in a breakout session afterwards, they should call Karen Bennett, 706-236-0444, to confirm their attendance.
Bissinger has collaborated with the School’s English faculty in setting the themes and questions for student essays. Students are choosing from a wide variety of topics for their essays; for example, “Discuss the economic plight of Odessa during the eighties. How does the author show this as a contributing factor to the phenomena of Friday Night Lights?” These essays will be handed in prior to Bissinger’s visit in hopes that the writing process will feed the discussion after the author’s talk.
A native of New York City, Bissinger has been the winner of such prestigious awards as the Pulitzer Prize, the Livingston Award, the American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award, the National Headliners Award, and nearly two dozen other national, state, and local awards. He has also been a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.
A graduate of Phillips Academy in 1972 and the University of Pennsylvania in 1976, his career started at the Ledger-Star in Norfolk, Va. He then moved to the St. Paul Pioneer Press and later the Philadelphia Inquirer.
In 1988 Bissinger left the Inquirer and moved to Odessa, Texas, to write Friday Night Lights about the impact of high school football on small-town life. The book, published in 1990, spent 15 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. It is still in print and last year alone 45,000 copies of a special tenth anniversary edition of the book were sold. In total, the book has sales of more than half a million copies.
In 1992, Bissinger returned to Philadelphia and wrote A Prayer for the City. In recent years he has turned his attention to teleplay and screenwriting, as well as serving as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair magazine.
Parents do not need to RSVP to attend Bissinger's talk in the arena; however, if they wish to participate in a breakout session afterwards, they should call Karen Bennett, 706-236-0444, to confirm their attendance.
Bissinger has collaborated with the School’s English faculty in setting the themes and questions for student essays. Students are choosing from a wide variety of topics for their essays; for example, “Discuss the economic plight of Odessa during the eighties. How does the author show this as a contributing factor to the phenomena of Friday Night Lights?” These essays will be handed in prior to Bissinger’s visit in hopes that the writing process will feed the discussion after the author’s talk.
A native of New York City, Bissinger has been the winner of such prestigious awards as the Pulitzer Prize, the Livingston Award, the American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award, the National Headliners Award, and nearly two dozen other national, state, and local awards. He has also been a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.
A graduate of Phillips Academy in 1972 and the University of Pennsylvania in 1976, his career started at the Ledger-Star in Norfolk, Va. He then moved to the St. Paul Pioneer Press and later the Philadelphia Inquirer.
In 1988 Bissinger left the Inquirer and moved to Odessa, Texas, to write Friday Night Lights about the impact of high school football on small-town life. The book, published in 1990, spent 15 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. It is still in print and last year alone 45,000 copies of a special tenth anniversary edition of the book were sold. In total, the book has sales of more than half a million copies.
In 1992, Bissinger returned to Philadelphia and wrote A Prayer for the City. In recent years he has turned his attention to teleplay and screenwriting, as well as serving as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair magazine.
