Bill Buford

Bill Buford (born 1954) is an American author and journalist. He is best known for his books Among the Thugs and Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Buford was raised in Southern California and attended the University of California, Berkeley. He later studied at King's College, Cambridge as a Marshall Scholar. Buford has served as the fiction editor for The New Yorker and was the editor of Granta for sixteen years. He is credited with coining the term 'dirty realism.' Among the Thugs is his insider's account of English football hooliganism.