Scott Stossel is Culture Editor of The American Prospect.
Scott Stossel joined The American Prospect as associate editor in early 1996, helping to preside over its first transformation from quarterly to bimonthly, and served as the magazine's executive editor from 1997 to 2001. As executive editor, Stossel helped found and run the Prospect's writing fellows program, oversaw the magazine's second transformation from a bimonthly to a biweekly publication, and brought a number of exciting new writers into the magazine.
Stossel has written for the Prospect on such diverse issues as TV imagery, race and sports, the 2000 election, and literary critic Edmund Wilson. Stossel's articles and essays on culture and society also appear regularly in such publications as The New Yorker, The New Republic, The AtlanticMonthly, and The Boston Phoenix. He is currently working on a book about Sargent Shriver (founder of the Peace Corps, the War on Poverty, and the Special Olympics, as well as the brother-in-law of John F. Kennedy).
Stossel came to The American Prospect from The Atlantic Monthly, where he spent one year editing the Arts & Entertainment Preview and four years as both a staff editor and editorial director for new media.
An avid sports fan, he plays tennis, squash, and soccer regularly. He considersthe United States's victory in the 1999 Women's World Cup one of the best thingsto happen to the country in recent years. One of his biggest heroes is the soccerplayer Mia Hamm. Since 1999, he has been a visiting lecturer in American Studiesat Trinity College, where he teaches a graduate seminar on sports and culture.
Born and raised in the Boston area, Stossel graduated from Harvard University in1991 and presently lives in Cambridge with (in the order in which they moved in)a cat, Atalanta; a wife, Susanna; a dog, Honey Bear; and another cat, Lil' Sage.He believes himself to have the largest collection of oversized- superballs-with- strange- objects- inside- them of any magazine editor in the country.
