Shea Serrano and the FOH Army

On the last day of 2017, Shea Serrano’s phone kept vibrating. Message after message from friends and colleagues trying to contact him. At first, he assumed that something had happened to his favorite basketball team, the San Antonio Spurs. Maybe his favorite player had been traded. He unlocks his phone to see this.

Having the former President of the United States read your book isn’t something that Shea would have believed possible just a decade earlier. He didn’t even expect he would ever become an author. He was a middle school teacher who was just looking for a part-time job. Something he could do from home so he could take care of his infant twins. That is when he started writing. His first writing job paid him $15 dollars. However, he kept looking for jobs, at first writing about anything and for anyone. Eventually, he was able to focus on his two loves, basketball and hip-hop. His passion for writing about basketball and hip-hop eventually landed him a job working fulltime for ESPN’S Grantland. When Grantland closed its doors, he went on to work at The Ringer where he still writes every week.

Fast-forward and now he is a New York Times bestselling author. His two books are “The Rap Year Book: The Most Important Rap Song From Every Year Since 1979, Discussed, Debated and Deconstructed” and “Basketball and Other Things”. What is even more amazing than his success is what he has done with it. He has turned his Twitter followers into a philanthropic guerilla group where everyone is invited. He calls them the FOH Army or Fuck Outta Here Army and they are ready to donate what they can, where it is needed. For example, he was able to raise $134,000 in six hours for the victims of Hurricane Harvey. When asked what made him start raising money for charities he stated “

“I don’t know why you would not want to [give back]. It just makes sense to do that,” “Before this, I never had like a platform to do anything, so when I finally got one, it was like, what am I gonna use this for?”

I found out about Shea Serrano through his articles on The Ringer. Soon I had owned both his books. I found something in his writing that is unique and at the same time recognizable. Those are the qualities that make him so approachable and make his fans so invested in his success.

-Brayan