New York State Writers Institute

SPEED READING
A PANEL ON SPORTS WRITING AND MOTOR SPORTS

Jeff MacGregor
JEFF MacGREGOR
Sports Journalist
Humorist
Janet Guthrie
JANET GUTHRIE
Indy 500 Top Competitor
Memoirist
Le Anne Schreiber
LE ANNE SCHREIBER
Sports Editor
Memoirist
guthrie_jante_car2.jpg - 13241 Bytes

Janet Guthrie, pioneering motorsports racer, is the author of the new memoir, Janet Guthrie: A Life at Full Throttle (2005). The memoir is an exceptionally well-written reflection on the author's life and career as a woman immersed in the complex, adrenaline-fueled, "macho" business of racing.

"An accomplished new memoir...one of the most distinctive [books] ever written on racing, and one of the best." - Charles Hirshberg, Sports Illustrated

[Guthrie's talent for] "expressing the complexity of her thoughts and emotions as a driver, especially in describing how she honed her mind and senses to the car and its response to the racetrack." - Library Journal

An aerospace engineer by training, Guthrie was the first woman to race at the Indianapolis 500, a top competitor who placed ninth in the 1978 Indy race, and a veteran of more than thirty NASCAR races. She is a charter member of the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame and the Women's Sports Foundation, and appears frequently on network television as a commentator on women's sports issues.

Sunday Money

Jeff MacGregor, sports journalist, is a six-time nominee for the National Magazine Award. His first book, Sunday Money: Speed! Lust! Madness! Death! (2005), is a smart, eye-opening, and often funny examination of the world of NASCAR racing. Accompanied by his wife, photographer Olya Evanitsky, MacGregor logged more than 47,000 miles in a small motor home during an eleven-month tour of NASCAR competitions.

"The wittiest, most searching sportswriting since A. J. Liebling," and "a brilliant stream-of-consciousness documentary.�" - Robert Stone, winner of the National Book Award, on Sunday Money

"MacGregor has heard clearly over the din, seen through the smoke and the haze, and gotten it all down perfectly." - Frank Deford, NPR reviewer

A special contributor to Sports Illustrated, MacGregor wrote the introductory essay to the magazine's 2004 50th Anniversary issue, in which he defines organized sports as "the perfection of the unnecessary." His sports articles and humor pieces have appeared often in the New York Times, and his work has been anthologized in Best American Sports Writing. His fiction has appeared in Story and Esquire. Midstream

Le Anne Schreiber, Visiting Writer in the UAlbany English Department, is the author of two memoirs, Midstream: The Story of a Mother's Death, and a Daughter's Renewal (1990), and Light Years (1996), both of which deal with the deaths of family members and the wildlands surrounding her home in a quiet community in upstate New York. As a journalist Schreiber covered the Montreal Olympics in 1976 for Time magazine and served as editor-in-chief of womenSports magazine. She helped launch Sports Monday, for the New York Times Sports Department, and later became head of the department, the first woman to hold that position. Schreiber also was deputy book review editor for four years at the New York Times Book Review. Schreiber provided Guthrie some assistance in editing of Life at Full Throttle.

Owned by Ken Gowey
Car #24 will be on display at this event courtesy of
Ken Gowey, Atlantic Coast Old-Timers (ACOT)
Times Union Article