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Books by this Author:
Honolulu (2009)
Moloka'i (2003)


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   Author Biography

Browse a biography and interview of Alan Brennert.
Plus: Book summary, excerpts and reviews at BookBrowse.com.

Alan Brennert
Alan Brennert Books by this author at BookBrowse:
Honolulu
Moloka'i

Read Interview

Link to Author's Website
Biography

Alan Brennert was born in Englewood, New Jersey, to Herbert E. Brennert (an aviation writer who contributed to such magazines as Skyways and American Helicopter) and Almyra E. Brennert.  Since 1973 he has lived in Southern California.  He holds a Bachelor's degree in English from California State University at Long Beach, and also did graduate work in screenwriting at UCLA.

In addition to novels, he has written short stories, teleplays, screenplays, and the libretto of a stage musical, Weird Romance, with music by Alan Men ken and lyrics by David Spencer.  Produced in 1992 by the WPA Theatre in New York, it has since been licensed for more than a hundred regional, high school, and college productions, both in the United States and abroad.  A cast album was released by Columbia Records in 1993.

His work as a writer-producer for the television series L.A. Law earned him an Emmy Award in 1991.  He has been nominated for an Emmy on two other occasions, once for a Golden Globe Award, and (three times) for the Writers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Teleplay of the Year.  He received a People's Choice Award for L.A. Law, and his short story "Ma Qui" was honored with a Nebula Award in 1992.

He has developed screenplays for major studios, as well as miniseries, pilots, and television movies.  Other series to which he has contributed include China Beach, Simon & Simon, and the 1980s revival of The Twilight Zone.  "But in television and film," he says, "sometimes your best work is never seen."  In 1999 he spent six months writing a four-hour miniseries for NBC and Kevin Costner's Tig Productions, based on David Marion Wilkinson's epic novel Not Between Brothers, about the founding of Texas.  When the network opted not to produce it, Alan decided he needed to write something that people would get to see, and the result was Moloka'i.

His new novel, Honolulu, grew out of the research he did for Moloka'i. "One of the most colorful periods of modern Hawaiian history was the so-called 'glamour days' of the 1920s and 1930s," Alan explains. "This was a time period I couldn't really explore in depth in Moloka'i, since my main characters were in isolation at Kalaupapa. These were the years when Hawai'i made its deepest impression on the American consciousness: the years of Matson liners, the China Clipper, Hollywood celebrities vacationing in Honolulu, and the Hawai'i Calls radio show that broadcasted popular hapa-haole music to the mainland. Yet at the same time this image of paradise was being presented to the American public, many Native Hawaiians and immigrants to Hawai'i labored on plantations for low wages or lived in poverty in Honolulu tenements. So Honolulu, the novel, is partly about this collision of image and reality...and how that reality was actually far richer and more captivating.

"It's also about the people from other countries and cultures who came to Hawai'i in search of a better life. Where Moloka'i was principally about Native Hawaiians, Honolulu is more about the immigrant experience in Hawai'i, and the origins of its unique multicultural society."

From the author's website
This biography was last updated on 03/04/2009.
A note about the biographies
We try to keep BookBrowse's biographies both up to date and accurate. However, with over 1,500 lives to keep track of it's inevitable that some won't be as current or as complete as we would like. So, please help us - if the information about a particular author is out of date, inaccurate or simply very short, and you know of a more complete source, please let us know. Authors and those connected with authors: If you wish to make changes to your bio, please send your complete biography as you would like it displayed so that we replace the old with the new.

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