Will Blythe is a magazine writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

 and book author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 living in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. He is a former literary editor

Editing

Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...

 at Esquire

Esquire (magazine)

Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...

magazine but is now a contributing editor for Harper's and Mirabella

Mirabella

Mirabella was a women's magazine published from 1989 to 2000. It was created by and named for Grace Mirabella, a former Vogue editor in chief....

, and writes for many other periodicals, including The New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

, Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

, Sports Illustrated

Sports Illustrated

Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...

, Elle

Elle (magazine)

Elle is a worldwide magazine of French origin that focuses on women's fashion, beauty, health, and entertainment. Elle is also the world's largest fashion magazine. It was founded by Pierre Lazareff and his wife Hélène Gordon in 1945. The title, in French, means "she".-History:Elle was founded in...

, and the Oxford American

Oxford American

The Oxford American is an American quarterly literary magazine "dedicated to featuring the very best in Southern writing while documenting the complexity and vitality of the American South."-First publication:...

.

His short story "The Taming Power of the Small" was anthologized in the Best American Short Stories

Best American Short Stories

The Best American Short Stories yearly anthology is a part of The Best American Series published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Since 1915, the BASS anthology has striven to contain the best short stories by some of the best-known writers in contemporary American literature.-Edward O'Brien:The...

 for 1988 and adapted into a 1995 short film starring David Morse

David Morse (actor)

David Bowditch Morse is an American stage, television, and film actor. He first came to national attention as Dr. Jack Morrison in the medical drama St. Elsewhere from 1982 to 1988...

 and Treat Williams

Treat Williams

Richard Treat Williams is a Screen Actors Guild Award–nominated American actor and children's book author who has appeared on film, stage and television...

. Blythe is perhaps best known for his 2006 book, To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever, which follows the author through a season rooting for his beloved University of North Carolina Tar Heels basketball team and examining his hatred of the school's rival, Duke University

Duke University

Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...

 (see Carolina-Duke rivalry). The New York Times describes Blythe thus: "... he writes amusingly, self-deprecatingly and often beautifully. {...} Fans of college basketball will wish that all sportswriters possessed Blythe's ability to describe a game, to translate its tension and render its action." Blythe is also the editor of Why I Write: Thoughts on the Craft of Fiction, published in 1999, and co-editor of Lust, Violence, Sin, Magic: Sixty Years of Esquire Fiction, published in 1993. He writes regularly for the New York Times Book Review.