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. 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 (a 2019 winner). His plays have also been semi-finalists at the Bay Area Playwrights Conference, the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, and been published by Samuel French.  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, a spot in the Orchard Project Episodic Lab, and been recommended by the Black List. He sold his first feature PAST & PRESENTS, a delightfully traditional Christmas rom com, to MarVista Entertainment (Fox)— 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. He’s got 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.  

Some other eclectic highlights from a varied writing life include: working 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 which won him a Society of Professional Journalism award; publishing a confessional essay for Slate about being an extra on HBO’s LOOKING where he met his longtime (and current!) partner Jon; writing and producing the libretto for a political opera about border security which premiered at London’s Tete-a-Tete opera festival; and, toiling very briefly as a for-hire online dating ghostwriter.

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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.