Dan Greenburg is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

, screenwriter

Screenwriter

Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

, humorist, journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

, and playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

.

He was born in Chicago, Illinois, got his B.F.A. from the University of Illinois and his M.F.A. from U.C.L.A. His 72 books have been published in 20 languages in 24 countries. His best-sellers for adults include How to be a Jewish Mother, How to Make Yourself Miserable, Love Kills

Love Kills

-Cast:*Mario Van Peebles – "Poe Finklestein"*Lesley Ann Warren – "Evelyn Heiss"*Donovan Leitch – "Dominique"*Loretta Devine – "Sylvia Finkelstein"*Louise Fletcher – "Alena Heiss"*Daniel Baldwin – "Danny Tucker"*Robert LaSardo – "Diesel"...

, Exes, and How to Avoid Love and Marriage. He writes four series of children's books, The Zack Files

The Zack Files

The Zack Files is a science fiction television program that revolves around a young boy, played by Robert Clark, who is a magnet for paranormal activity and attends Horace White High School for Boys along with his three friends Cam, Gwen, and Spencer. Zack manages to get himself into trouble with...

, Secrets of Dripping Fang, Maximum Boy

Maximum Boy

Maximum Boy is a series of books about a young superhero by the American author and screenwriter Dan Greenburg. The series started in 2001 with The Hijacking of Manhattan, later republished as How I Became a Superhero. There are eight books in the series.Max "Maximum Boy" Silver is an 11 year old...

, and Weird Planet.

Writing career

Raised to be an artist like his father, Dan studied design at the University of Illinois. While there he read Catcher in the Rye, which turned him towards being a writer. His first piece of professional writing was "3 Bears in Search of an Author," a retelling of the same story in the voices of J.D. Salinger, Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

, and James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

. The piece was picked up by Esquire Magazine, and Esquire commissioned a sequel: Hansel and Gretel in the styles of Vladimir Nabakov, Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac

Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...

 and Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

.

Dan got his B.F.A. degree and moved to Los Angeles, where he received UCLA's first M.F.A. in industrial design. Dissatisfied with industrial design, Dan spent three years in Los Angeles advertising agencies. Meanwhile, Dan's first editor at Esquire had started a new national magazine convinced Dan to move to New York and become its Managing Editor. In New York, Dan began to write a satirical non-fiction book entitled How to be a Jewish Mother, which became the bestselling book of 1965 and allowed him to become a full-time author, journalist, and script writer.

Personal life

Greenburg's first wife was writer and film director Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, novelist, playwright, journalist, author, and blogger.She is best known for her romantic comedies and is a triple nominee for the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay; for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally... and Sleepless in...

. After seven years, their marriage ended in an amicable divorce. His second wife was writer Suzanne O'Malley, with whom he had a son, Zack O'Malley Greenburg

Zack O'Malley Greenburg

Zack O'Malley Greenburg is an American writer, journalist and former child-actor. He is a staff writer at Forbes Magazine, where he covers business, music and sports, and authors a popular blog called...

, and for whom Dan's best-selling series of children's books, The Zack Files, was named. At age five, Zack played the title role of Lorenzo in the film Lorenzo's Oil

Lorenzo's Oil

Lorenzo's Oil is a 1992 drama film directed by George Miller. It is based on a true story of Augusto and Michaela Odone, two parents in a relentless search for a cure for their son Lorenzo's adrenoleukodystrophy...

. Zack O'Malley Greenburg

Zack O'Malley Greenburg

Zack O'Malley Greenburg is an American writer, journalist and former child-actor. He is a staff writer at Forbes Magazine, where he covers business, music and sports, and authors a popular blog called...

 is a staff writer at Forbes Magazine and the author of a business-oriented biography of Jay-Z, Empire State of Mind. Dan is currently married to Judith C. Wilson, who as J.C. Greenburg writes children's books, including the 18-volume series Andrew Lost

Andrew Lost

Andrew Lost is a children's book series by J. C. Greenburg, published between 2002 and 2008. It is about a boy inventor called Andrew Dubble whose inventions rarely work the way he expects them to. There are 18 books in the series, with each four books, and the last two, making a complete...

. They live in Westchester, NY with many cats.

Greenburg claims he had over-protective parents and grew up scared of everything. "So I've spent much of my adult life undertaking risky adventures and writing about them," he says, "trying to convince myself I wasn't a coward. Now my adventures are more about adrenaline than fear." Writing of Greenburg's escapades, George Plimpton once said: "I wouldn't dare to try many of Greenburg's adventures...but I have always envied him his forays into other people's worlds and his wonderful and comic skill at describing them."

Greenburg says his adventures had to fulfill two criteria: "(1) They had to take place in worlds that were exotic to me, with unfamiliar rules and vocabularies, and (2) they had to frighten me physically, emotionally, or both." He has given examples including: accompanying New York homicide cops as they capture a killer, flying upside-down over the Pacific with a stunt pilot in an open-cockpit plane, and learning to discipline tigers and lions in Texas.

Books for adults

• How to Be a Jewish Mother: A Very Lovely Training Manual (1964)
• Kiss My Firm But Pliant Lips (1965)
• How to Make Yourself Miserable: Another Vital Training Manual (1966)
• Chewsday (1968)
• Philly (1969)
• The Shame of Our Art Museums (1969)
• Scoring (1972)
• Something's There: My Adventures in the Occult (1976)
• Love Kills (1978)
• What Do Women Want? (1982)
• How to Avoid Love and Marriage (1983)
• True Adventures (1985)
• Confessions of a Pregnant Father (1986)
• The Nanny
• Exes (1990)
• Moses Supposes: The Bible As Told to Dan Greenburg (1997)

Books for children

• The Zack Files
  The Zack Files
  The Zack Files is a science fiction television program that revolves around a young boy, played by Robert Clark, who is a magnet for paranormal activity and attends Horace White High School for Boys along with his three friends Cam, Gwen, and Spencer. Zack manages to get himself into trouble with...
  
   (chapter book series)
• Great Grandpa's in the Litter Box (#1)
• Through the Medicine Cabinet (#2)
• A Ghost Named Wanda (#3)
• Zap! I'm a Mind Reader (#4)
• Dr. Jekyll, Orthodontist (#5)
• I'm Out of My Body, Please Leave a Message (#6)
• Never Trust a Cat Who Wears Earrings (#7)
• My Son, the Time Traveler (#8)
• The Volcano Goddess Will See You Now (#9)
• Bozo the Clone (#10)
• How to Speak Dolphin in Three Easy Lessons (#11)
• Now You See Me, Now You Don't (#12)
• The Misfortune Cookie (#13)
• Elvis the Turnip, and Me (#14)
• Hang a Left at Venus (#15)
• Evil Queen Tut and the Great Ant Pyramids (#16)
• Yikes! My Grandma's a Teenager (#17)
• How I Fixed the Year 1000 Problem (#18)
• The Boy Who Cried Bigfoot (#19)
• The Day I Went from Bad to Verse (#20)
• Don't Count on Dracula (#21)
• This Body Isn't Big Enough for Both of Us (#22)
• Greenish Eggs and Dinosaurs (#23)
• My Grandma, Major League Slugger (#24)
• Trapped in the Museum of Unnatural History (#25)
• Me and My Mummy (#26)
• My Teacher Ate My Homework (#27)
• If You Tell a Lie, Your Butt Will Grow (#28)
• Just Add Water and Scream (#29)
• It's Itchcraft (#30)
• Secrets of Dripping Fang (chapter book series)
• The Onts (#1)
• Treachery and Betrayal at Jolly Days (#2)
• The Vampire's Curse (#3)
• Fall of the House of Mandible (#4)
• The Shluffmuffin Boy is History (#5)
• Attack of the Giant Octopus (#6)
• Please Don't Eat the Children (#7)
• When Bad Snakes Attack Good Children (#8)
• Maximum Boy
  Maximum Boy
  Maximum Boy is a series of books about a young superhero by the American author and screenwriter Dan Greenburg. The series started in 2001 with The Hijacking of Manhattan, later republished as How I Became a Superhero. There are eight books in the series.Max "Maximum Boy" Silver is an 11 year old...
  
   (chapter book series)
• How I Became a Superhero (#1)
• The Day Everything Tasted Like Broccoli (#2)
• Superhero...or Super Thief? (#3)
• Invasion from the Planet of the Cows (#4)
• Maximum Girl Unmasked (#5)
• Attack of the Soggy Underwater People (#6)
• Meet Super Sid, Crime-Fighting Kid (#7)
• The Worst Bully in the Entire Universe (#8)
• Weird Planet (chapter book series)
• Dude, Where's My Space Ship?" (#1)
• Lost in Las Vegas (#2)
• Chilling with the Great Ones (#3)
• Attack of the Evil Elvises (#4)
• Lights...Camera...Liftoff! (#5)
• Thrills, Chills, and Cosmic Spills (#6)
• Jumbo the Boy and Arnold the Elephant (picture book)
• The Bed That Ran Away from Home (picture book)
• Young Santa (chapter book)
• Claws (chapter book)

Filmography

• Live a Little, Love a Little
• Private Lessons
  Private Lessons (1981 film)
  Private Lessons is the title of an American comedy film released in 1980. The film starred Sylvia Kristel, Howard Hesseman, Eric Brown, and Ed Begley, Jr.The screenplay was written by Dan Greenburg, who wrote the original source novel, Philly...
  
  
• Private School
  Private School (film)
  Private School is a 1983 teen oriented sex comedy film, directed by Noel Black.-Cast :* Phoebe Cates as Christine Ramsey* Betsy Russell as Jordan Leigh-Jenson* Matthew Modine as Jim Green...
  
  
• I Could Never...
• The Guardian
• Fourplay

Dramatic works

Greenburg's plays have been performed on Broadway, Off Broadway, at the American Conservatory Theater, Yale University, and at the Actors Studio, where he was a member of the Playwrights Unit led by Norman Mailer.

• Free to be...You and Me (co-author of revue which ran on Broadway and Off)
• Oh! Calcutta! (co-author of Kenneth Tynan revue which ran on Broadway for 21 years)
• Arf! and The Great Airplane Snatch (author of one-acts that ran Off-Broadway)
• The Restaurant (author of one-act play which ran Off-Broadway)
• Convention (author of one-act play which ran Off-Broadway)
• How to be a Jewish Mother (co-author, author of the original book; stage adaptations of Greenburg's best-selling book have been running in France almost continuously for over 30 years; they've also been produced in Spain, Poland, Israel, Brazil, Holland, Turkey, and have again opened in Brazil. A new adaptation is in the works by Greenburg and British co-author Adam Rolston.

Television

• Steambath (Greenburg's award-winning Showtime adaptation of the Bruce Jay Friedman play)
• Murder in Mind (ABC-TV adaptation by Greenburg of his own best-selling thriller, Love Kills)
• The Zack Files (award-winning 52-episode series based on Greenburg's best-selling book series)
• Mad About You (story credit on the Paul Reiser series)

Greenburg has also written two dozen sitcom pilots for CBS-TV and NBC-TV, including
a fireman sitcom for producer-comedian Alan King (which Greenburg researched by spending months with NYC firefighters) and a cop sitcom for producer and cop-who-broke-The-French-Connection-case Sonny Grosso (which Greenburg researched by spending months with NYC homicide cops).

Greenburg has also been a frequent talk show guest on such programs as the Today Show, the Tonight Show, Larry King Live, and Late Night with David Letterman. With fellow author Avery Corman, Greenburg has also appeared as a stand-up comedian on TV talk shows hosted by Sir David Frost, Dick Cavett, Merv Griffin, as well as at the New York Improv comedy club.

Journalism

More than 150 of Greenburg's articles and humor pieces have appeared in such periodicals as The New Yorker, The Huffington Post, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Time, Life, Newsweek, Ms. Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle, Readers Digest, and have been reprinted in 44 anthologies of humor and satire in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

Acting

Greenburg has had small acting roles in several films he's written, including Private Lessons, Private School, and I Could Never... He had ten speaking scenes in Doc, the Frank Perry remake of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, playing the role of John Clum

John Clum

John Philip Clum was an Indian agent for the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in the Arizona Territory. He implemented a limited form of self-government on the reservation that was so successful that other reservations were closed and their residents moved to San Carlos. Clum later became the...

, editor of the Tombstone Epitaph. The New Yorker film critic Penelope Gilliatt mentioned Greenburg favorably in her review.

External links

• Dan Greenburg interview at HarcourtBooks.com