Michael Maren

I'm a journalist, filmmaker, and former aid worker. My new film, entitled A Little White Lie, releases on 3/3/23. More information, to follow.

My first feature film, A Short History of Decay, was released in May 2014 and is now available on most online sites.  The film was shot in Wilmington, NC and New York City. Before that I wrote screenplays for about a decade and sold them to studios. And before that I was a journalist, working primarily out tag heuer grand carrera wav511b ba0900 stainless steel mens 40mm automatic of Africa covering wars and famines. That experience informs much of my film work. (Some of that reporting is on this website.)

Articles about me have often described me as a "disgruntled" former aid worker. I am not disgruntled. I am realistic. To really know what I think, read The Road to Hell, which Philip Gourevich, in a recent New Yorker article, called "the seminal critique of foreign aid".

As a journalist, I've written for The Village Voice, Newsweek, The Nation, The New Republic, Harper's, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, and many op-eds for The New York Times.

For the last decade, I've worked as a screenwriter, writing scripts for HBO, Sony Pictures, Phoenix, and working with actors such as Chris Tucker and Reese Witherspoon.

I  created Under the Influence: Writers on Film, a new film series at The Crosby Street Hotel in New York.  Along with my wife, Dani Shapiro, I decamp for Positano, Italy each March, where we direct the Sirenland Writers Conference.

There's more stuff about me on Wikipedia. Someone put a page up. It's fairly accurate.