Jon Robin Baitz

Jon Robin Baitz is an American playwright, screenwriter, and TV producer. Born in Los Angeles and raised in Brazil and South Africa, he did not go to college, instead clerking in a bookstore and assisting producers, experiences that fed his first play, Mizlansky/Zilinsky. The Film Society, set at a South African prep school, had a 1987 Los Angeles success and an Off-Broadway run in 1988 with Nathan Lane, bringing a Drama Desk nomination. He followed with The Substance of Fire and The End of the Day, and wrote and directed Three Hotels for PBS in 1991. A Fair Country was a 1996 Pulitzer finalist. On screen he acted in Last Summer in the Hamptons (1995) and One Fine Day (1996), and wrote scripts for The Substance of Fire (1996) and People I Know (2002). He created Brothers & Sisters, which ran from 2006 to 2011, and wrote for The West Wing and Alias. Other Desert Cities was a Pulitzer finalist.