The Fantasy Sports Writers Association announced finalists for its 2015 writing and media awards on Thursday afternoon. This is the FSWA's twelfth awards season, and the organization received a record number of nominations. All submissions were reviewed by an independent panel of university professors, via a blind judging process. Winners will be announced live on SiriusXM in the coming weeks. 

Finalists for the 2015 awards are as follows:

John Paulsen writes and ranks for 4for4 Fantasy Football and has kept up a blistering pace over at Fantasy Pros with his weekly rankings, um, rankings. He was kind enough to answer a few questions below about fantasy, rankings, dynasty and more!

1. How did you get interested in fantasy football?

I started playing in college in the early 90s. My first league was actually an auction league, which is sort of funny since snake drafts still dominate the industry. We used to calculate our own scores using the box scores in the Monday/Tuesday editions of the USA Today. I loved the marriage between statistics and sports, and the challenge of outwitting my competition. I won that league and have been hooked since.

2. How did you get started in the fantasy football business?

After college, I worked as an industrial engineer for FedEx doing a variety of work, but it was all very math-heavy. They were downsizing in the early 2000s and I took a buyout because I didn’t want to move back to Memphis. Knowing that I could always go back to engineering, I wanted to pursue a career in sportswriting, and I found a job working for a sports blog (The Scores Report). There, I started writing about fantasy sports and when I saw that FantasyPros was judging accuracy in 2010, I entered the contest and managed to win it. A year or two later I joined 4for4.com as their full-time ranker.