​Tamryn Spruill is an artist, an author, and an activist — an award-winning freelance journalist, self-described justice warrior from birth, and visionary. She has devoted much of her career toward amplifying the excellence of women, especially Black women, whose contributions to humanity have been systemically erased, obscured, minimized, and omitted. It is her life’s mission to force an end to this particular legacy of the United States’s original sin: slavery. 

For much of the last decade, she has centered her reporting on the WNBA: a league she has followed since its 1996 inception, which credits for cleaving an indelible imprint on her life’s trajectory, both personally and professionally. At a time when mainstream sports media abided a strictly “Stick to Sports” ethos, Spruill was reporting on the thorny social issues which have stunted the league’s growth every year of its existence and imperiled its existence. 

She was the first to report on the demographics of the WNBA in relation to its hiring practices, and her writing  and commentary have appeared in Harper’s BAZAAR, The New York Times, SLAM, ZORA, Teen Vogue, The Athletic, Newsweek, and Swish Appeal, where she served as editor-in-chief from 2018 to 2021. She was the first woman — thus, the first Black and queer woman — to hold that position. 

She was awarded the LA Press Club’s 2020 Southern California Journalism Award for “Best Sports Commentary, Print/Online, for “Critical Assist” (The Red Bulletin).   

A Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Goddard College) and a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and Journalism (University of South Carolina), Spruill is writing COURT QUEENS: The WNBA’s Story of Power, Passion, and Perseverance, On and Off the Court (forthcoming from ABRAMS Books). She is represented by JL Stermer at Next Level Lit, a boutique literary agency in New York City that represents voices of change.

Spruill is also an artist, songwriter, and musician; she is classically trained in violin and plays piano, guitar, and bass. After she finishes her book, Spruill looks forward to teaching creative writing in BFA programs, MFA residencies or workshops; she also hopes to spend endless hours in her art studio, and she wants to release an EP.