Manifest Bio
A layoff during the economic recession of 2007 inspired Tamryn Spruill to pursue a new career path; the WNBA Finals seven years later determined its direction.
After working her entire journalistic career in the financial news sector, a layoff from her well-paying New York City job during the economic recession of 2007-o8 provided Spruill, for the first time in years, rest. She put part of her severance check toward a Scandinavian getaway, traveling through Sweden and Denmark and spending time with a longtime friend at her family’s island cottage off the coast of Finland.
A hike into the woods behind the property led Spruill to a field of cranberries as far as the eye could see, absolute silence and a key realization: She wasn’t happy, hadn’t been for a while and was looking forward to making big changes that would help center her working life around her core values and most cherished interests. Upon her return to the States, Spruill began planning a move, seeking quieter surroundings longer term. Freelance writing and editing gigs kept her afloat financially while she applied to a Master’s of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing, to which she was accepted. And in spite of financial hardship (freelance gigs dried up) that included housing insecurity, she completed her Master’s thesis--a novel--and graduated on time.
Writers, like other creatives, are compelled to make sense of life, their own internal landscape or their own untamable imaginations, and Spruill is no different. The stillness of her rented townhouse far away from the frenetic hum of New York opened a space for her to finally reckon with past traumas and their effects on her life. The “PTSD meltdown of 2009,” as she calls it, was the catalyst for her channeling her rage about what happened into a fictionalized landscape. Spruill applied to exactly one MFA program and submitted her novel beginnings for the writing sample. She was accepted and wrote another, differently-themed novel as her Master’s thesis.
Adamant in her refusal to return to Corporate America, Spruill began teaching college English, literature and Creative Writing--the latter of which brought the most joy even amid the grind of adjunct professorship. But coverage of the 2014 WNBA Finals caused her to reenter journalism, though as a writer rather than as an editor.
As she wrote in a September 2014 FanPost for SwishAppeal.com, where four years later she would become the first woman/Black woman/gay woman editor-in-chief:
The Phoenix Mercury swept the Chicago Sky to win the 2014 WNBA title, on Chicago’s floor, and the story at the top of the (ESPN) sports ticker was the arrest warrant issued for Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson. Never mind that this is the Mercury’s third title in seven years, won with forward Candice Dupree shooting 74% for the series, guard Diana Taurasi becoming the WNBA’s all-time leading scorer in WNBA Finals history, and center Brittney Griner blocking a WNBA-record eight shots in one quarter of Game 1, punctuating her Defensive Player of the Year season.
Spruill further expressed in the FanPost that she wrote these observations during the 40 minutes it took ESPN to add the story of the Mercury winning the 2014 WNBA Championship to the SportsCenter ticker. “When it did,” she added, “Adrian Peterson’s legal situation remained the ‘Developing Story’ at the top, while the WNBA champs received ‘Griner-less Game 3,’ on a line following Major League Baseball coverage.”
When ESPN finally aired a segment on the Mercury’s victory, Spruill wrote, it was a montage of the WNBA Finals, no more than a minute in length, that failed to include a single postgame interview--in spite of the sweeping nature of Phoenix’s win and that the franchise did so without its starting center, Griner, who was rehabilitating an eye injury she sustained earlier in the series. Spruill went on to compare Mercury’s inequitable coverage with the moment-by-moment, champagne-in-the-locker room broadcasting with which championship-winning teams in the NBA are regaled. And she sounded off on the social impact of such brazen, discriminatory treatment of women athletes, representative of similar treatment of women in other industries society-wide.
Recognizing the degree to which coverage of the WNBA had waned in quality and quantity, a far cry from the ubiquitous attention placed on the league upon its 1996 inception, Spruill--a justice-seeker from birth--set about using her talents to restore dignity to coverage of the WNBA and its players. Coverage of the league had become neglected, placed in uncaring hands and left to die. A league that meant everything to Spruill in her youth could not be left to wither into obscurity.
Granted, this may seem lofty, hyperbolic or just plain weird. But anyone who has spent extended time with Spruill knows she is principled: guided by core, unflappable convictions about fairness and equality. Integrity is her guiding light, and her outspoken unwillingness to settle for unfairness, inequality or simple mediocrity sometimes rubs people the wrong way. People who are comfortable with, and often benefit from, the status quo. If no one else is willing to speak truth to power in the face of wrongdoing, Spruill will, even though it is a difficult path she never enjoys. Yet, if tasked with choosing between silence in the face of injustice or using her voice to transform an unjust event into a just one, she will pick the latter, and cope as best she can with any resultant personal or professional consequence. (Yes, there always is at least one).
Spruill brought this energy into her role as editor-in-chief at Swish Appeal in April 2018 in which she centered the editorial agenda for covering women’s basketball on balancing on-court achievements with off-court issues of race, sexism and homophobia. She reported on, for Swish Appeal and other publications, the disparities impacting women’s professional basketball players in the United States versus their male counterparts. Her reporting on the Las Vegas Aces’ travel woes of 2018 grabbed the attention of the league, and her coverage of WNBA teams getting kicked out of their home arenas during the playoffs educated the sports-viewing public about a practice that has thwarted the postseason success of teams impacted by this trend. Spruill's writing about the politics of Black hair in the wake of an on-court hair-pulling incident brought to the forefront the still ongoing discrimination Black Americans face when they sport natural hair styles.
But Spruill is proudest of: 1) her groundbreaking reporting on the WNBA injury crisis; and 2) her writing on the absence of Black women head coaches in the WNBA. On injuries, Spruill interviewed WNBA trainers, past and present, and other health professionals, bringing out of the shadows the severity of the impact of year-round basketball on players’ bodies. A black eye of the WNBA historically has been the low wages it has paid players, forcing them to supplement their salaries by competing for teams in other countries during the league's so-called offseason. Spruill’s reporting on these wage inequities further enlightened the sports-enjoying public on the lives of WNBA players, who themselves in November 2019 demanded change, which resulted in a landmark collective bargaining agreement. Spruill's writing in January 2020 on the absence of Black women head coaches in a league made up of 80 percent Black women captivated the attention of former players who have been denied access to these opportunities as franchises have prioritized hiring former NBA players and elevating other men from the assistant coaching ranks. Spruill’s reporting became a major national talking point throughout the 2020 season of pandemic and protest, presenting another angle from which to address systemic racism in all the ways it impacts Black women's lives.
As with all of her work, Spruill doesn’t claim to be the best at anything in spite of her intrinsic desire to continually hone, develop and improve. Yet, she fully owns her natural inclination toward curiosity, her innate powers of observation, and her undeniable courage and unwavering willingness to go places others avoid, if doing so will shed light on pertinent issues and potentially serve a greater, just purpose. For Spruill, it has always been bigger than basketball, but that doesn’t mean she’s not a die-hard of the women’s game.
Spruill’s love for women’s basketball helped mold her into the tough, unapologetic woman she is. Her role models were the women of the USA Basketball Women’s National Team who won the gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, beginning with their standout collegiate careers: Lisa Leslie, Rebecca Lobo, Dawn Staley, Sheryl Swoopes. These women were household names. Their faces were in every U.S. living room. Even before the WNBA tipped off its inaugural season on June 21, 1997, they were bona fide stars. So, when she learned in 2018 that her niece, then in elementary school, had heard of LeBron James and Stephen Curry but could not name a single women’s basketball player and, in fact, did not know a women’s professional basketball league even existed, Spruill became more committed than ever. On top of the exquisite season-to-season coverage and cultural examinations she already was becoming known for, Spruill set about the task of chronicling the league’s history.
In honor of the women who built the league with their blood, sweat and tears, under a cultural microscope--and for WNBA enthusiasts who have been denied consistent, engaging coverage by a male-dominated sports media space that still assigns women’s sports only a sliver of overall air and print time (and with a reprehensible quality reflective of its low priority to media decision-makers)--COURT QUEENS: The WNBA’s Story of Power, Passion, and Perseverance On and Off the Court was born.
Spruill may have been written off as too short to play for the girls’ teams of her youth, but she still gets her shot up whenever she can. More importantly, she’s usually unafraid to shoot it, and when she does, she (metaphorically) aims for a basket-shaped constellation of stars. If nerves do creep in, she relies on a mastered ability to act in spite of fear. A lifetime of being the first or only woman, Black person or gay person in a space--often tolerated rather than embraced--prepared her well. Spruill is a game-changer who has made an indelible mark on women’s basketball coverage, furthering and deepening discussions about how race, gender and sexuality impact social acceptance of the WNBA and its players.
Represented by JL Stermer at Next Level Lit, Spruill’s bylines include Harper’s BAZAAR, The New York Times, SLAM, ZORA, Teen Vogue, The Athletic and Swish Appeal, where she also has served as editor-in-chief since 2018 when hired as the first woman to hold that position. Her media appearances, as an expert source, include NPR’s All Things Considered, Fox Sports’ First Sports in the Morning, The Julie DiCaro Show on 670 The Score and Bleacher Report.
She is the winner of the LA Press Club's 2020 Southern California Journalism Award for Best Sports Commentary, Print/Online for "Critical Assist" (The Red Bulletin): a historically contextualized feature on WNBA guards Natasha Cloud and Renee Montgomery, who opted out of the 2020 season to pursue social justice work in the aftermath of the police killings of African Americans George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and fight voter suppression in their respective WNBA cities of Washington, DC, and Atlanta, GA.
She holds Bachelor’s degrees in Spanish and Journalism (University of South Carolina) and a Master’s of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Goddard College).
ADDITIONAL BIOS:
After working her entire journalistic career in the financial news sector, a layoff from her well-paying New York City job during the economic recession of 2007-o8 provided Spruill, for the first time in years, rest. She put part of her severance check toward a Scandinavian getaway, traveling through Sweden and Denmark and spending time with a longtime friend at her family’s island cottage off the coast of Finland.
A hike into the woods behind the property led Spruill to a field of cranberries as far as the eye could see, absolute silence and a key realization: She wasn’t happy, hadn’t been for a while and was looking forward to making big changes that would help center her working life around her core values and most cherished interests. Upon her return to the States, Spruill began planning a move, seeking quieter surroundings longer term. Freelance writing and editing gigs kept her afloat financially while she applied to a Master’s of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing, to which she was accepted. And in spite of financial hardship (freelance gigs dried up) that included housing insecurity, she completed her Master’s thesis--a novel--and graduated on time.
Writers, like other creatives, are compelled to make sense of life, their own internal landscape or their own untamable imaginations, and Spruill is no different. The stillness of her rented townhouse far away from the frenetic hum of New York opened a space for her to finally reckon with past traumas and their effects on her life. The “PTSD meltdown of 2009,” as she calls it, was the catalyst for her channeling her rage about what happened into a fictionalized landscape. Spruill applied to exactly one MFA program and submitted her novel beginnings for the writing sample. She was accepted and wrote another, differently-themed novel as her Master’s thesis.
Adamant in her refusal to return to Corporate America, Spruill began teaching college English, literature and Creative Writing--the latter of which brought the most joy even amid the grind of adjunct professorship. But coverage of the 2014 WNBA Finals caused her to reenter journalism, though as a writer rather than as an editor.
As she wrote in a September 2014 FanPost for SwishAppeal.com, where four years later she would become the first woman/Black woman/gay woman editor-in-chief:
The Phoenix Mercury swept the Chicago Sky to win the 2014 WNBA title, on Chicago’s floor, and the story at the top of the (ESPN) sports ticker was the arrest warrant issued for Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson. Never mind that this is the Mercury’s third title in seven years, won with forward Candice Dupree shooting 74% for the series, guard Diana Taurasi becoming the WNBA’s all-time leading scorer in WNBA Finals history, and center Brittney Griner blocking a WNBA-record eight shots in one quarter of Game 1, punctuating her Defensive Player of the Year season.
Spruill further expressed in the FanPost that she wrote these observations during the 40 minutes it took ESPN to add the story of the Mercury winning the 2014 WNBA Championship to the SportsCenter ticker. “When it did,” she added, “Adrian Peterson’s legal situation remained the ‘Developing Story’ at the top, while the WNBA champs received ‘Griner-less Game 3,’ on a line following Major League Baseball coverage.”
When ESPN finally aired a segment on the Mercury’s victory, Spruill wrote, it was a montage of the WNBA Finals, no more than a minute in length, that failed to include a single postgame interview--in spite of the sweeping nature of Phoenix’s win and that the franchise did so without its starting center, Griner, who was rehabilitating an eye injury she sustained earlier in the series. Spruill went on to compare Mercury’s inequitable coverage with the moment-by-moment, champagne-in-the-locker room broadcasting with which championship-winning teams in the NBA are regaled. And she sounded off on the social impact of such brazen, discriminatory treatment of women athletes, representative of similar treatment of women in other industries society-wide.
Recognizing the degree to which coverage of the WNBA had waned in quality and quantity, a far cry from the ubiquitous attention placed on the league upon its 1996 inception, Spruill--a justice-seeker from birth--set about using her talents to restore dignity to coverage of the WNBA and its players. Coverage of the league had become neglected, placed in uncaring hands and left to die. A league that meant everything to Spruill in her youth could not be left to wither into obscurity.
Granted, this may seem lofty, hyperbolic or just plain weird. But anyone who has spent extended time with Spruill knows she is principled: guided by core, unflappable convictions about fairness and equality. Integrity is her guiding light, and her outspoken unwillingness to settle for unfairness, inequality or simple mediocrity sometimes rubs people the wrong way. People who are comfortable with, and often benefit from, the status quo. If no one else is willing to speak truth to power in the face of wrongdoing, Spruill will, even though it is a difficult path she never enjoys. Yet, if tasked with choosing between silence in the face of injustice or using her voice to transform an unjust event into a just one, she will pick the latter, and cope as best she can with any resultant personal or professional consequence. (Yes, there always is at least one).
Spruill brought this energy into her role as editor-in-chief at Swish Appeal in April 2018 in which she centered the editorial agenda for covering women’s basketball on balancing on-court achievements with off-court issues of race, sexism and homophobia. She reported on, for Swish Appeal and other publications, the disparities impacting women’s professional basketball players in the United States versus their male counterparts. Her reporting on the Las Vegas Aces’ travel woes of 2018 grabbed the attention of the league, and her coverage of WNBA teams getting kicked out of their home arenas during the playoffs educated the sports-viewing public about a practice that has thwarted the postseason success of teams impacted by this trend. Spruill's writing about the politics of Black hair in the wake of an on-court hair-pulling incident brought to the forefront the still ongoing discrimination Black Americans face when they sport natural hair styles.
But Spruill is proudest of: 1) her groundbreaking reporting on the WNBA injury crisis; and 2) her writing on the absence of Black women head coaches in the WNBA. On injuries, Spruill interviewed WNBA trainers, past and present, and other health professionals, bringing out of the shadows the severity of the impact of year-round basketball on players’ bodies. A black eye of the WNBA historically has been the low wages it has paid players, forcing them to supplement their salaries by competing for teams in other countries during the league's so-called offseason. Spruill’s reporting on these wage inequities further enlightened the sports-enjoying public on the lives of WNBA players, who themselves in November 2019 demanded change, which resulted in a landmark collective bargaining agreement. Spruill's writing in January 2020 on the absence of Black women head coaches in a league made up of 80 percent Black women captivated the attention of former players who have been denied access to these opportunities as franchises have prioritized hiring former NBA players and elevating other men from the assistant coaching ranks. Spruill’s reporting became a major national talking point throughout the 2020 season of pandemic and protest, presenting another angle from which to address systemic racism in all the ways it impacts Black women's lives.
As with all of her work, Spruill doesn’t claim to be the best at anything in spite of her intrinsic desire to continually hone, develop and improve. Yet, she fully owns her natural inclination toward curiosity, her innate powers of observation, and her undeniable courage and unwavering willingness to go places others avoid, if doing so will shed light on pertinent issues and potentially serve a greater, just purpose. For Spruill, it has always been bigger than basketball, but that doesn’t mean she’s not a die-hard of the women’s game.
Spruill’s love for women’s basketball helped mold her into the tough, unapologetic woman she is. Her role models were the women of the USA Basketball Women’s National Team who won the gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, beginning with their standout collegiate careers: Lisa Leslie, Rebecca Lobo, Dawn Staley, Sheryl Swoopes. These women were household names. Their faces were in every U.S. living room. Even before the WNBA tipped off its inaugural season on June 21, 1997, they were bona fide stars. So, when she learned in 2018 that her niece, then in elementary school, had heard of LeBron James and Stephen Curry but could not name a single women’s basketball player and, in fact, did not know a women’s professional basketball league even existed, Spruill became more committed than ever. On top of the exquisite season-to-season coverage and cultural examinations she already was becoming known for, Spruill set about the task of chronicling the league’s history.
In honor of the women who built the league with their blood, sweat and tears, under a cultural microscope--and for WNBA enthusiasts who have been denied consistent, engaging coverage by a male-dominated sports media space that still assigns women’s sports only a sliver of overall air and print time (and with a reprehensible quality reflective of its low priority to media decision-makers)--COURT QUEENS: The WNBA’s Story of Power, Passion, and Perseverance On and Off the Court was born.
Spruill may have been written off as too short to play for the girls’ teams of her youth, but she still gets her shot up whenever she can. More importantly, she’s usually unafraid to shoot it, and when she does, she (metaphorically) aims for a basket-shaped constellation of stars. If nerves do creep in, she relies on a mastered ability to act in spite of fear. A lifetime of being the first or only woman, Black person or gay person in a space--often tolerated rather than embraced--prepared her well. Spruill is a game-changer who has made an indelible mark on women’s basketball coverage, furthering and deepening discussions about how race, gender and sexuality impact social acceptance of the WNBA and its players.
Represented by JL Stermer at Next Level Lit, Spruill’s bylines include Harper’s BAZAAR, The New York Times, SLAM, ZORA, Teen Vogue, The Athletic and Swish Appeal, where she also has served as editor-in-chief since 2018 when hired as the first woman to hold that position. Her media appearances, as an expert source, include NPR’s All Things Considered, Fox Sports’ First Sports in the Morning, The Julie DiCaro Show on 670 The Score and Bleacher Report.
She is the winner of the LA Press Club's 2020 Southern California Journalism Award for Best Sports Commentary, Print/Online for "Critical Assist" (The Red Bulletin): a historically contextualized feature on WNBA guards Natasha Cloud and Renee Montgomery, who opted out of the 2020 season to pursue social justice work in the aftermath of the police killings of African Americans George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and fight voter suppression in their respective WNBA cities of Washington, DC, and Atlanta, GA.
She holds Bachelor’s degrees in Spanish and Journalism (University of South Carolina) and a Master’s of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Goddard College).
ADDITIONAL BIOS:
Copyright © 2023 Tamryn Spruill.