Mark Leiren-Young

Mark is an award-winning author, screenwriter, director, playwright and journalist. His documentary, The Hundred Year Old Whale won the 2017 WGC Award for Best Documentary. His debut feature, The Green Chain, which he wrote and directed, was a finalist for a Writers Guild of Canada Award. Mark won the prestigious Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour for his debut book, Never Shoot a Stampede Queen, which he's developing as a TV series. He's in post-production on a documentary based on his bestselling non-fiction book, The Killer Whale Who Changed the World. TV credits include developing Tales from the Crypt as a live action series for young audiences for Cookie Jar Entertainment and Teletoon; developing Marvel Comic's Moon Knight as a live action hour long drama series for No Equal Entertainment; developing the animated series Hood for Disney and Teletoon; and creating The O-Zone (Soapbox Productions/Global TV). He story edited season one of the Lifetime/City TV series, Blood Ties, and has written for such shows as The Collector, Psi Factor and the new reboot of ReBoot (Reboot:The Guardian Code) for Netflix.His TV writing credits include Reboot: The Guardian Code (Netflix), Blood Ties (Lifetime) and The Collector (CityTV). His stage plays have been produced throughout Canada, the US, Europe and Australia. His play, Shylock just finished a three year run at Prague's Divadlo Na Jezerce. His latest play, Bar Mitzvah Boy, has been produced throughout Canada and the US and is published by Playwrights Canada Press. He was editor of Reel West and covered the Canadian entertainment scene for The Hollywood Reporter, The Vancouver Sun, The Georgia Straight and publications around the world.