TREY ELLIS
Novelist, Screenwriter, Professor, Cultural Critic and Single Dad

Trey Ellis is an American Book Award Winning novelist, Emmy-nominated screenwriter, and Assistant Professor of Screenwriting in the Graduate School of Film at Columbia University. His most recent book is Bedtime Stories: Adventures in the Land of Single-Fatherhood. He is considered one of our most astute and witty authorities on a variety of subjects: from being a father, single or otherwise, in this new millennium, to U.S. politics, the black middle class, domestic race-relations and pop-culture. He is often requested to contribute on these issues at home and abroad. He has been interviewed on The CBS Early Show with Harry Smith, NPR, KCRW’s acclaimed "Which Way L.A.?" and "The Treatment" with former New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell as well as for the E! True Hollywood Story. He has contributed commentary to NPR’s All Things Considered and to such notable newspapers and magazines as The New York Times, Newsweek, Playboy, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and Salon.com. He was recently commissioned to write his first play, for the Lincoln Center Institute. He is a regular blogger on Arianna Huffington’s popular political website HuffingtonPost.com and his own very popular blog, "Father of the Year" on Babble.com.

Mr. Ellis was the subject of a half-hour PBS documentary and has been profiled twice in The Los Angeles Times and in People magazine. He was also featured in the coffee-table book, Why We Write: Personal Statements and Photographic Portraits of 25 Top Screenwriters. In 1989, when Mr. Ellis was a recent graduate of Stanford University, he published his seminal essay, "The New Black Aesthetic." Since then it has been reprinted dozens of times and the term "New Black Aesthetic" itself along with "cultural mulatto" also coined by Mr. Ellis are now commonly cited by anyone seriously investigating the state of black popular culture. In the article he brought attention to the then relatively unknown African-American tastemakers Russell Simmons, George Wolfe and a then twenty-year-old Chris Rock.

Mr. Ellis’ first novel, Platitudes, was published in the United States in 1988 and in France in 1994, followed by his second novel Home Repairs, in 1993. Platitudes and Home Repairs were both glowingly reviewed by The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Washington Post Book World, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, among others. The film rights to Home Repairs were purchased by Denzel Washington and Mr. Ellis was enlisted to write the screenplay. Right Here, Right Now, his latest novel, won the American Book Award in 1999 and was named one of the notable books of the year by The Washington Post. Platitudes was recently reissued by the prestigious Black Classics Press, an imprint of Northeastern University Press. "The New Black Aesthetic" is also included in the reissue since his novel and the essay are frequently taught in universities around the country.

Mr. Ellis’ screenplay, "The Inkwell" was sold to Touchstone Pictures and was made into a film in 1992. He was nominated for an Emmy for writing the screenplay for the HBO film, "The Tuskegee Airmen" starring Lawrence Fishburne and Cuba Gooding, Jr.

Mr. Ellis completed a screenplay for Morgan Freeman and Paramount Pictures and has adapted the novel, Good Fences, for Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover and Spike Lee. Good Fences premiered at the Sundance Film festival and Mr. Ellis’s script was a PEN Center USA West finalist for best teleplay of the year. Mr. Ellis has been invited to the Sundance Institute for both the winter screenwriting lab and the summer production lab, and has taught screenwriting at Sundance’s Brazilian lab and at the Université d’Eté Fonds Culturel Franco-Americain in Saint Malo, France. An instructor in fiction-writing as well, Mr. Ellis has taught advanced fiction at the UCLA Extension and judged the 2004 New School University Chapbook competition.

Previous to Stanford University Trey Ellis graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover. He has traveled extensively throughout Africa, South and Central America and has lived in Italy, France and Japan. He speaks Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese and is a surfer, snowboarder and advanced yoga student. He currently resides in New York City with his two children.