Walker, Sam

PERSONAL:

Married; children: a son. Education:Studied at the University of Michigan.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Penguin Group, Viking Publicity, 375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014.E-mail—sam@fantasylandthebook.com; sam.walker@wsj.com.

CAREER:

Journalist. Wall Street Journal, special writer and sports columnist, 1998—; Christian ScienceMonitor, congressional correspondent and bureau chief in Chicago and Dallas, five years. Regular guest speaker on CNBC and the Entertainment & Sports Network (ESPN).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Hopwood Award and Arthur Miller Award, both from the University of Michigan.

WRITINGS:

Fantasyland: A Season on Baseball's Lunatic Fringe,Viking (New York, NY), 2006.

Sports columnist for the Wall Street Journal. Contributor to Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sam Walker is the special writer and sports columnist for the Wall Street Journal. Prior to joining the periodical in 1998, he wrote for theAtlanta Journal-Constitution and the Christian ScienceMonitor. Walker made his book publishing debut in 2006 with Fantasyland: A Season on Baseball's Lunatic Fringe. Walker describes his foray into the world of fantasy baseball using his press pass to gain access to baseball stars for any helpful information they may be able to give him.

Reviews of Fantasyland were mostly positive, even though most of the reviewers did not follow the fantasy sport. Martin Levin, writing in the TorontoGlobe and Mail, concluded that Walker's "portraits of this billion-dollar enterprise and the characters within it are funny and fascinating." In a Publishers Weeklyreview, a critic mentioned the numerous encounters Walker had with players in "this hilarious diary of the 2004 season." Writing in the New York Times, Dan Barry called this "vivid journey into baseball's bizarro world … [an] entertaining first book." Barry noted that "Walker's narrative energy flags at times," but usually his "prose is entertaining and informative." Wes Lukowsky, in a Booklist review, said that Fantasylandis "written with humor and a twinkling eye directed at the lunacy of it all."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, February 15, 2006, Wes Lukowsky, review of Fantasyland: A Season on Baseball's Lunatic Fringe, p. 31.

Entertainment Weekly, March 10, 2006, Bob Cannon, review of Fantasyland, p. 71.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), March 6, 2006, John Allemang, review of Fantasyland,p. R3; April 29, 2006, Martin Levin, review ofFantasyland, p. D21.

New York Times, March 22, 2006, Dan Barry, review of Fantasyland.

New York Times Book Review, June 4, 2006, Hugo Lindgren, review of Fantasyland, p. L2.

Publishers Weekly, December 12, 2005, review ofFantasyland, p. 54.

ONLINE

Fantasyland Web site,http://www.fantasylandthebook.com(August 6, 2006), author biography.