Shea Serrano
Shea Serrano is an American author, journalist, and former teacher. He is best known for his work with the sports and pop culture websites, The Ringer and Grantland, as well as his books, including The Rap Year Book, Basketball and Movies , all three of which were The New York Times #1 best-sellers. Writing about Serrano for GQ, Chris Gayomali said: "If you were to draw a triple Venn diagram of hoops, trunk bangers, and jokes made at the expense of J. Cole, Grantland writer Shea Serrano would be smack-dab in the center, probably wearing a Tim Duncan jersey." Serrano's activity and humor on Twitter have earned him referrals from GQ and other publications.
Early life
Serrano was born in San Antonio, Texas and grew up in the neighborhood of Valley Hi. He is Mexican-American. He graduated from Sam Houston State University, where he started as a criminal justice major but eventually earned a degree in psychology, he also was in Omega Delta Phi.After graduating from college, Serrano moved to Houston, where he worked in construction before becoming a middle-school science teacher. He taught 8th grade science at a Title 1 school in Houston for nine years.
Career
Journalism
Serrano began writing in 2007 as a way to supplement his family's income when his pregnant wife was put on bedrest. After briefly writing for the Near Northwest Banner, Serrano freelanced for the Houston Press. He predominately wrote about hip-hop after noticing that the majority of the writers only wrote about rock music, despite the fact Houston is a cornerstone of southern rap music.Serrano's first work that drew national attention was his Houston Press piece on rapper Trae tha Truth's ban from a Houston radio station and the rapper's subsequent lawsuit against the station. This piece allowed him to earn a place at the Houston Press’ sister publication, the LA Weekly. Serrano continued to earn national attention with his pieces about his children and stories about the songs played at his school dance and birthday party. While there, he wrote a piece describing having sex with his wife while listening to Drake. Grantland writer Molly Lambert saw the piece and passed it to her editors, who then invited Serrano to freelance for them. His first piece was about gift shopping with the rapper 2 Chainz. Serrano was hired full-time in July 2015.
In July 2016, Serrano moved with much of the Grantland team to Bill Simmons' new entertainment platform, The Ringer.
Serrano has also written for GQ, ESPN, LA Weekly, XXL, Rolling Stone, MTV, and Vice.
Books
Serrano's first book, Bun B's Rap Coloring and Activity Book, was published 17 September 2013. The book consists of coloring and activity pages based on popular rappers. The work was a collaboration with Houston rapper Bun B, although Serrano wrote and illustrated the book himself.Serrano's second book, The Rap Year Book: The Most Important Rap Song From Every Year Since 1979, Discussed, Debated, and Deconstructed, was published 13 October 2015 by Abrams Image. It soon appeared on The New York Times Best Seller List for the advice, how-to and miscellaneous category as well as the culture category. In March 2016, the book was optioned for a documentary series. In September 2016, the book was listed by Billboard as one of the 100 best music books of all-time.
Serrano's third book Basketball was published in October 2017. Illustrator Arturo Torres, Serrano's collaborator on The Rap Year Book, also illustrated Basketball . It debuted at number two on The New York Times Best Seller list for the advice, how-to and miscellaneous category. In November 2017, it climbed to number one on The New York Times best-seller list for the sports and fitness category. On 31 December 2017, former U.S. President Barack Obama mentioned Basketball in a Facebook post describing his favorite books of the year.
Serrano's fourth book Movies was published in October 2019 and became his third consecutive number one bestseller on The New York Times best-seller list.
Social media and other projects
Serrano has an ardent following on his active Twitter feed, where "office hours are almost always open. He holds court daily on matters ranging from basketball to Taco Bell to Young Thug to parenting to the injustices of unpaid content creation...Periodically, Serrano will tweet out his email address so that anyone can ask him for advice on making it as a writer." The Verge called the community he created this way a "utopia on Twitter"; GOOD Magazine called him "Our New Favorite Internet Hero."On 20 March 2016, Serrano announced a weekly newsletter "Basketball ", which comes out every Tuesday, focused on the National Basketball Association. The newsletter features musings from Serrano and illustrations from Torres. The inaugural issue featured NBA players in scenes from popular movies, starting with Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green in a scene from the 1987 movie Over the Top. Within weeks, the newsletter had reached over 30,000 subscribers. The newsletter is published for free, though Serrano and Torres allowed for donations to be made twice. They used the donations to make contributions to charities, including the Genesis Women's Shelter, Kids' Meals, Operation Turkey and more. In total, they've donated approximately $10,000 via newsletter donations.
Serrano's Twitter feed has also spawned considerable charitable giving. On 21 December 2016, Serrano and his Twitter followers, colloquially termed the FOH ARMY, joined up to give a parking lot attendant who'd helped Serrano find his car at an airport a $3000 tip. They playfully referred to it as the Radelle Christmas Miracle. On 9 March 2017, Serrano and company donated $12,539.87 to Planned Parenthood in recognition of International Women's Day. On 27 March 2017, Serrano mobilized the FOH ARMY again, this time to help one former student fund a trip to Turkey she was hoping to take to help teach children there English. She'd set a $3700 goal for her Go Fund Me page; Serrano and his Twitter followers raised nearly $4,500 in less than an hour. On 17 August 2017, Serrano and the FOH ARMY joined up to fund several teachers' Donors Choose pages to help them start the school year off right, often completing the requested funding in a matter of minutes; two days later, the group contributed over $10,700 to support an LGBTQ youth center in San Antonio, raising the money in less than seven hours. On 31 August 2017, Serrano invited Twitter followers to join him in a "Fuck Hurricane Harvey" round of donations to support Houston relief work, with Serrano putting in $200 to start the effort. Four hours later, the group had contributed more than $90,000; by the end of the night, they had raised more than $130,000. On 8 December 2017, Serrano and the FOH ARMY donated $19,000 to The Children's Shelter in San Antonio.