About

HAL ACKERMAN’s first novel, Stein, Stoned, won the Lovey Award for best first novel in 2011. Stein, Stung, his second novel, was published in 2012 His short stories have appeared in North Dakota Review, New Millennium Writings, Southeast Review, (Winner there of Robert Olen Butler’s pick for World’s Best Short Short Story), Crab Creek Review, The Pinch, and most recently in the current Idaho Review, in the company of Ann Beattie, T.C Boyle, Joyce Carol Oates, Jess Walter, and a few other dropworthy names.

“Testosterone: How Prostate Cancer Made a Man of Me” won the William Saroyan Centennial Award for Drama, and was named Best Play at the 2011 United solo Festival in New York.

Until his retirement in 2015, he served as co-area head of the UCLA screenwriting program. His students have won every major award. Scores of screenplays written in his classes have been bought or optioned, and at the most recent count thirteen have become films. His 2003 book on craft, Write Screenplays That Sell: The Ackerman Way, (despite having the world’s most pretentious title) is the text of choice in a growing number of screenwriting programs around the country.