Bio

Daniel Hirsch is a playwright and screenwriter who writes about how fundamentally weird it is to be a human being. His writing is populated by deeply flawed but charming characters and infused with a darkly comic sensibility. He previously worked for writer/producer Sheila Callaghan (SHAMELESS) developing TV and film projects for Netflix, Amazon, and Warner Brothers. His screenwriting has earned prizes from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and a spot in the Orchard Project Episodic Lab. He sold his first feature PAST & PRESENTS, a delightfully traditional Christmas rom com, to MarVista Entertainment— which for a gay, often overly-cerebral, Jewish, atheist is kind of a hoot.  

He can be fast and loose with his intellectual and aesthetic curiosities, so it all eventually makes sense. In high school, he was that kid who ran the school newspaper, directed the spring play, and led a delegation of teens to Washington D.C. to protest the Iraq war. (Think Max Fischer in RUSHMORE, right down to occasionally sporting a beret and experiencing loss at a young age.) It’s an interdisciplinary approach that has stubbornly persisted; he has a background in journalism, an MFA in playwriting from Carnegie Mellon, and recently biked 545 miles across California to raise money for the LA LGBT Center. The queer youngest son of a highly competitive, overly academic, lefty, messy, Western Massachusetts-based, Brooklyn-derived family, he’s long been compelled to do the most.  

He worked as a journalist for a hyperlocal news outlet in San Francisco called Mission Local where he covered crime, city politics, immigrant communities, real estate, and Silicon Valley’s Borg-like encroachment on all forms of life—work that won him a Society of Professional Journalism award. His stage plays have appeared at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Great Plains Theatre Conference, InkWell Playwright’s Lab, the Road Theatre, Antaeus Theatre, the Off Off Broadway Festival, and been published by Samuel French. Some other eclectic highlights from a varied writing life include: a confessional essay for Slate about working as an extra on HBO’s LOOKING where he met his longtime (and current!) partner Jon; a stint as a for-hire online dating ghostwriter; the libretto for a political opera about border security which premiered at London’s Tete-a-Tete opera festival. 

Representation: Adam Blum, freewill



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Please be in touch should you have any questions about my work. I'm always on the look out for new collaborators, interview subjects, sugar daddies, pen-pals, trolls, etc.