Alison Kervin

Alison Kervin is the Sports Editor of the Mail on Sunday newspaper, Britain's biggest-selling Sunday newspaper. She is the first female in the UK to become sports editor of a major national newspaper.[1] She is also an award-winning journalist, biographer and novelist. During her first year as Sports Editor she launched the paper's 'concussion campaign' which fought to make sport, particularly rugby union, responsible for head trauma. She received international recognition for her work which resulted in sweeping changes to sport to keep players safe. She was voted in the Top 10 most influential women in sport and is known as a strong, campaigning journalist.

She met Obama to persuade him to act: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion/article-2638367/Barack-Obama-host-concussion-conference-US-concerns-grow-head-injuries-sport.html and extended the campaign to football: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2586987/Football-dock-amid-confusion-FAs-promise-10-year-study-link-football-dementia.html

Her work prompted a government review.

Fiction writing

Kervin has written a series of light-hearted novels centred on footballers' wives and girlfriends (known as WAGs): The WAG's Diary,[2] A WAG Abroad and WAGs at the World Cup; followed by the tongue-in-cheek WAGs' Guide to Euro 2012. Her fourth novel, Celebrity Bride, a romantic comedy, was published in June 2009.[3] Mother & Son, about the relationship between a single mother, her son, and the boy's father, was published in 2014.[4]

Sports writing

Kervin is now Sports Editor of The Mail on Sunday, she was formerly the Chief Sports Feature Writer of The Times newspaper where she wrote a weekly interview – The Kervin Interview – for three years, then she became Chief Sports Interviewer of The Daily Telegraph before going freelance. Recently she has worked as a consultant to Harper Collins Publishers, media trainer for UK Sport, and she was consultant editor on the Official Olympic Souvenir programme.

Kervin has written seven sport-related books including Denise Lewis: Personal Best, Jason Leonard: The Autobiography,[5] Sports Writing, The Unofficial Guide to the Rugby World Cup and Clive Woodward: The Biography,[5] the autobiography of Phil Vickery and Thirty Bullies. She has also ghost-written a number of columns for The Times, including Jonny Wilkinson's.

Before working as a newspaper and magazine interviewer, Kervin was The Times’ rugby editor for two years, and prior to that she was editor of Rugby World – the biggest selling rugby magazine in the world. She has also worked on Golf Monthly and Women & Golf.

She has also worked as a journalist for publications as diverse as The Spectator, New Statesman, Company, Woman’s Own, Vogue, New York Times, Sydney Morning Herald, That's Life, You magazine, The Mail on Sunday, The Daily Telegraph, Country Life and Tatler. She currently works as the Chief Sports Interviewer for the Daily Telegraph.

Kervin worked for the Rugby Football Union as the public relations manager of the England team and was the first woman presenter on Rugby Special and the first woman to referee at Twickenham. She also holds coaching qualifications in ten sports, and sits on numerous judging panels including the BAFTAs, BBC Sports Personality of the Year, Laureus World Sports Awards and the Magazine Journalist and Sports Journalist of the Year Awards.

Awards

Kervin was short-listed for the 2004 and 2005 Interviewer of the Year award for her work on The Times and The Sunday Times. She was also Woman of Achievement in Cosmopolitan magazine and won Feature Writer of the Year, Interviewer of the Year and Magazine Editor of the Year in the IPC magazine awards.

Bibliography

Fiction

Non-fiction

References

  1. ↑ "Mail on Sunday appoints Fleet Street's first female sports editor", The Guardian, 20 March 2013
  2. ↑ Wogan, Terry (6 February 2010). "What a week to be a WAG!". The Daily Telegraph (UK). Retrieved 5 August 2010.
  3. ↑ Celebrity Bride at Fantastic Fiction
  4. ↑ Mother & Son at Fantastic Fiction
  5. 1 2 "Telegraph Media Group announces more cross-platform jobs". Press Gazette. 1 May 2008. Retrieved 5 August 2010.
  6. ↑ Kervin, Alison (October 2007). The WAG's Diary. Avon. ISBN 978-1-84756-054-4.
  7. ↑ Kervin, Alison (July 2008). A WAG Abroad. Avon. ISBN 978-1-84756-055-1.
  8. ↑ Kervin, Alison (June 2009). Celebrity Bride. Ebury Press. ISBN 978-0-09-193211-4.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Monday, January 11, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.