Events

Emmy and Golden Globe-winning writer/producer and Princeton alumnus Craig Mazin ‘92 discusses the making of HBO’s Chernobyl and his career journey in a conversation with Director of the Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies Michael A. Reynolds and Creative Writing Lecturer Susanna Styron. Audience Q&A follows the conversation.

The conversation is open to Princeton students, faculty and staff. Visit our Virtual Events Page for the Zoom ID to join this conversation; participants will need to log in to this page with Princeton University ID to gain access.

 


Sponsored by Princeton University’s Lewis Center of the Arts, and presented in partnership with the Center for Career Development and the Program in Russian, Eastern Europe and Eurasian Studies.

ABOUT

craig with blue collar shirt and beardPrinceton alum Craig Mazin (Class of 1992) is the Golden Globe and two-time Emmy Award-winning writer and producer of the HBO Limited Series Chernobyl, for which he also won a Writers Guild Award and Producers Guild Award. Craig has also made a name for himself as a feature film writer with a knack for appealing to broad audiences over the course of his 25-year career. His hit films include The Hangover Part II and Part III and Identity Thief. Together, his films have grossed over one billion dollars in theaters worldwide.

Currently, Mazin is writing a feature film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Wicked for producer Marc Platt and Universal Pictures, and he is writing and producing a number of upcoming projects for HBO.

Craig can be heard each week on the popular screenwriting podcast Scriptnotes, which he co-hosts with fellow writer John August.

 


michael in blue shirt and red tieMichael A. Reynolds is associate professor of Near Eastern Studies. He is the author of Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), co-winner of the American Historical Association’s George Louis Beer Prize, a Financial Times book of the summer, and a Choice outstanding title. His research areas include Ottoman and modern Middle Eastern history, Russian and Eurasian history, the Caucasus, international relations, empire, nationalism, Turkish foreign policy, and US foreign policy. He holds a BA in Government and Slavic Languages and Literature from Harvard University, an MA in Political Science from Columbia University, and PhD in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University.

 


susanna in black tank by green trees

Photo by Marilyn Roos

Susanna Styron’s most recent feature documentary, Out of My Head, premiered at MoMA’s Doc Fortnight and won Best International Documentary at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival. Her short narrative film, House of Teeth, won several awards on the 2018 festival circuit and is available on Amazon. Susanna is the writer/director of the critically acclaimed Columbia Pictures feature film, Shadrach, starring Harvey Keitel and Andie MacDowell, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival. She wrote the TV movies In from the Night and an adaptation of Ann Tyler’s Back When We Were Grown-ups for Hallmark Hall of Fame; Taking Back Our Town for Lifetime, for which she received a Christopher Award and an Environmental Media Award; and Crossing the Line, also for Lifetime. In series television, Susanna has written and directed for A&E’s 100 Centre Street, created by Sidney Lumet; and written for Borgia, created by Tom Fontana. She has developed several television series with Tom Fontana, including Unpredictable, which was sold to AMC’s WE channel. Susanna has published personal essays in Spin Magazine, The Yale Revue, Real Simple Magazine and The New York Times. She holds a B.A. from Yale University and an M.F.A. from the American Film Institute. She has taught directing and screenwriting in Columbia University’s graduate film program; at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts (graduate and undergraduate); and at the Mediterranean Film Institute in Greece.

Presented By

  • Center for Career Development
  • Program in Russian
  • East European and Eurasian Studies
  • Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures

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