David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.

Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

 and received a Tony

Tony Award

The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...

 nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross

Glengarry Glen Ross

Glengarry Glen Ross is a 1984 play written by David Mamet. The play shows parts of two days in the lives of four desperate Chicago real estate agents who are prepared to engage in any number of unethical, illegal acts—from lies and flattery to bribery, threats, intimidation and burglary—to sell...

 (1984). He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow

Speed-the-Plow

Speed-the-Plow is a play by David Mamet which is a satirical dissection of the American movie business, a theme Mamet would revisit in his later films Wag the Dog and State and Main ....

 (1988). As a screenwriter, he received Oscar nominations for The Verdict

The Verdict

The Verdict is a 1982 courtroom drama film which tells the story of a down-on-his-luck alcoholic lawyer who pushes a medical malpractice case in order to improve his own situation, but discovers along the way that he is doing the right thing. Since the lawsuit involves a woman in a persistent...

 (1982) and Wag the Dog

Wag the Dog

Wag the Dog is a 1997 black comedy film starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro, co-starring Anne Heche, Denis Leary and William H. Macy about a Washington spin doctor who, merely days before a presidential election, distracts the electorate from a sex scandal by hiring a Hollywood film producer...

 (1997). Mamet's books include: The Old Religion (1997), a novel about the lynching of Leo Frank

Leo Frank

Leo Max Frank was a Jewish-American factory superintendent whose hanging in 1915 by a lynch mob of prominent citizens in Marietta, Georgia drew attention to antisemitism in the United States....

; Five Cities of Refuge: Weekly Reflections on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (2004), a Torah

Torah

Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...

 commentary with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner

Lawrence Kushner

Lawrence Kushner is a Reform rabbi and currently the scholar-in-residence at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco, California.-Biography:Born in Detroit, Kushner graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Cincinnati, after which he went on to receive his rabbinical ordination from Hebrew...

; The Wicked Son

The Wicked Son

The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Jewish self-hatred, and the Jews is a collection of essays by playwright David Mamet, published by Nextbook/Schocken in 2006...

 (2006), a study of Jewish self-hatred

Self-hating Jew

Self-hating Jew is a term used to allege that a Jewish person holds antisemitic beliefs or engages in antisemitic actions. The concept gained widespread currency after Theodor Lessing's 1930 book Der Jüdische Selbsthass ; the term became "something of a key term of opprobrium in and beyond Cold...

 and antisemitism; and Bambi vs. Godzilla, a commentary on the movie business.
Mamet was born in 1947 in Chicago to Jewish parents, Lenore June (Silver), a teacher, and Bernard Morris Mamet, an attorney.