SPORTS WRITER: Bill Konigsberg is an award-winning sports journalist who has written for television, newspapers, wire services, and the internet. He currently is a sports writer and editor for The Associated Press. He has covered the New York Mets, and his weekly fantasy baseball column has appeared across the country, from the New York Daily News to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In May of 2001, while working as an assistant editor at ESPN.com, he came out on the front page of the website in an article entitled “Sports World Still a Struggle for Gays.” That article won him a GLAAD Media Award the following year. Since then, he has spoken at venues across the country about what it is like to be one of the few openly gay people in sports media. He has written for ESPN.com, The New York Daily News, San Francisco Chronicle, Miami Herald, Denver Post, and North Jersey Herald and News. His work has also appeared in Out Magazine and Outsports.com. His story was included as a chapter in the book “Jocks 2: Coming Out To Play” by Dan Woog.

NOVELIST: What if the star of the high school football team was secretly gay? That's the central question of the novel OUT OF THE POCKET, to be released Sept. 16 by Dutton Books.

Bobby Framingham, a 17-year-old senior at Durango High School in Orange County, Calif., is struggling. Highly recruited and one of the most talented players in the state, Bobby knows he's different than his teammates. But he so much doesn't want to be. Can he be one of the boys while still being honest about who he is? And how will the girl who thinks she's dating him take to the news?

PERSONAL: In 1994, upon graduating from Columbia University with a degree in Literature-Writing, Bill became internationally known for simulating out the remainder of that year’s strike-shortened baseball season on a computer program. He wrote about the games and posted results daily in the NY Daily News, San Francisco Chronicle and Miami Herald. Coverage of his simulated season was seen on NBC World News Tonight, Dateline NBC, CNN, and the Tokyo Broadcast System. His World Series, won by the New York Yankees in what some believe to be the greatest fix since the Black Sox scandal of 1919, was dramatized on Dateline NBC using actual college players.

Bill received his MFA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University in 2005. He currently lives in Brooklyn Heights with his significant other, Chuck Cahoy.