RAFI KOHAN

Rafi Kohan is an Atlanta-based writer, editor, and creative leader. He is the author of Trash Talk: The Only Book About Destroying Your Rivals That Isn’t Total Garbage, which is available now (pub date: December 5, 2023) and examines the art and science of talking shit not just as a quirk of modern gamesmanship, but also as a deeply ingrained human behavioral phenomenon that has erupted across time, culture, and geography. With reporting that ranges from playground basketball courts and cricket grounds to insult-comedy stages, UFC mega fights, wrestling rings, military survival schools, and more, Trash Talk is the first-ever book to explore the topic, a “joyful, adventurous read” (Jeff Pearlman), and “very, very funny” (Anthony Jeselnik).

Kohan’s first book, The Arena: Inside the Tailgating, Ticket-Scalping, Mascot-Racing, Dubiously Funded, and Possibly Haunted Monuments of American Sport, weaves together on-the-ground reporting, hundreds of original interviews, and deep-dive research into a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary examination of the modern American sports stadium. The book was a finalist for the 2018 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing and was lauded in the New York Times Book Review as “smart, readable, deeply reported and researched, engagingly personal, funny and often surprisingly poignant.” The Wall Street Journal dubbed Kohan “the Studs Terkel of stadium life.”

Previously, Kohan served as deputy editor at The New York Observer, where he wrote a variety of long-form feature and cover stories, including a bombshell profile of Carmelo Anthony in October 2013, which broke the news that the star forward was going to test the free agent market. As a journalist, his writing has also appeared in numerous outlets and publications, including GQ (where he worked for five years), Men's Journal, The Wall Street Journal, Town & Country, Slate, Rolling Stone, The Ringer, ESPN, Vice, Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and The Washington Post, among others, covering everything from identity theft to the World Series of Birding to the New Orleans Police Department on Mardi Gras. (That last piece, written for GQ, was named “Notable” in The Best American Travel Writing anthology.)

Most recently, Kohan worked at The Atlantic, as the executive editorial director for Re:think, the magazine's award-winning creative studio. He and his team executed ambitious content programs on behalf of dozens of brands, including HBO, Allstate, Lyft, Nest, Netflix, HPE, The North Face, Google, REI, Walmart, and many, many more. 

He can be contacted at:

Email: rlkohan [at] gmail [dot-com]

Instagram: @kohanimal

Twitter/X: @rafi_kohan

Publicity inquiries: Liz Wetzel, PublicAffairs: Liz [dot] Wetzel [at] hbgusa [dot-com]

Speaking engagements: Gabrielle Brown, Leading Authorities: Gabrielle [dot] Brown [at] lauthorities [dot-com]

Agent: David Patterson, Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency: dp [at] skagency [dot-com]