BIOGRAPHY OF MARTIN SCHECTER

by Martin Schecter

My first creative production, at age eight, was an 8 mm movie version of "The Odyssey," with my younger brother as Odysseus and a collection of stuffed animals as the Trojan army. But instead of film, I somehow ended up becoming a pre-med, as that's what all good young Jewish boys do.

But in 1985, I decided to change my professional direction and left medical school to enroll in the University of Arizona's creative writing program. There I studied fiction writing and directing, and graduated with an M.F.A. in 1989. With my new degree, I moved back East; got a job scribing pharmaceutical science documents; and worked writing short stories, book reviews, and my first-published novel, Two Halves of New Haven (Crown, 1992), a coming of age story set at Yale Med. With the publication of Two Halves, in 1992, I landed a tenure-track job teaching creative writing and cultural studies at Drake University: again, I thought teaching was what all good young writers do. After two years of the tenure-track thing in the middle of Iowa, I decided I'd written more before, and I had a yearning for the coasts. I came back to New York, where I began working in multimedia and produced interactive soap operas as well as professional websites for broadcast and publishing clients.

I've started High Concept Productions to devote myself full time to creative work. Recent projects include Killer App, about my experiences in "Silicon Alley," and a science-fiction screenplay. I'm also a producer for a real-life documentary about Fire Island from U.K.'s Channel 4.