Bookmark with Don Noble: Rick Bragg (2015)

Rick Bragg won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1996 for his work at The New York Times. Born in Piedmont, Alabama, in 1959, Mr. Bragg is the author of two best-selling memoirs, All Over But the Shoutin’ and Ava’s Man, as well as his newly released The Prince of Frogtown. He credits his writing ability to the oral storytelling of family and friends in his childhood in the Appalachian foothills of Alabama, saying: “My grandfather on my daddy’s side and my grandma on my momma’s side used to try and cuss their miseries away. They could out-cuss any damn body I have ever seen. I am only an amateur cusser at best, but I inherited other things from these people who grew up on the ridges and deep in the hollows of northeastern Alabama, the foothills of the Appalachians. They taught me, on a thousand front porch nights, as a million jugs passed from hand to hand, how to tell a story.” Bragg has told stories and taught writing at Harvard University, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, Boston University, the University of South Florida, and other colleges. Bragg became a domestic correspondent in The New York Times’ Atlanta office in October 1994. Before joining The New York Times he worked at several newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the St. Petersburg Times, covering murders and unrest in Haiti as a metro reporter, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Jonesboro killings, the Susan Smith trial, and more as a national correspondent based in Atlanta. He later became the paper’s Miami bureau chief just in time for Elian Gonzalez’s arrival and the international controversy surrounding the Cuban boy. Bragg attended Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow from 1992 to 1993 (“the only real college I ever had”) and beside his Pulitzer Prize, he is the recipient of the American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award and 31 other national, regional and state writing awards. He has had stories included in Best Newspaper Writing 1991, Best of the Press 1988, and two journalism textbooks on good writing and foreign reporting. He now works as a writing professor at the University of Alabama’s journalism program in its College of Communications and Information Sciences.