Glen Merzer, Off the Reservation
Glen Merzer is an author, playwright, and screenwriter. Merzer grew up in Bellmore, N.Y., on Long Island, and attended college at New College of Florida in Sarasota. After college, he became a stand-up comic in San Francisco circa 1980, working with such comics as Dana Carvey, A. Whitney Brown, and Will Durst. He then attended two graduate schools in theatre (Indiana University and the U. of Alabama), receiving a degree at neither one, and one graduate Creative Writing Program (at Boston University, studying under Leslie Epstein), where he received his M.A.
Merzer’s most recent book is a novel (his first), Off the Reservation, published by Vivid Thoughts Press (Dec., 2014). Off the Reservation is a comic narrative about a quirky vegan congressman from Bloomington, IN, who undertakes an unconventional quest for the presidency; actor Jason Alexander called it “as politically savvy and poetically literate a book as I have read in a long while…. a completely gorgeous and rewarding experience.” Kirkus Reviews chose it as one of the “Best Books of 2015—Indie,” and The Progressive Magazine chose it as one of their “Favorite Books of 2015.”
Merzer began his career in book-writing as co-author, with Howard Lyman, of Mad Cowboy(Scribner, 1998) and No More Bull! (Scribner, 2005). Merzer is also co-author of Unprocessed (2011), by Chef AJ; Food over Medicine (BenBella Books, 2013), with Pam Popper; Better Than Vegan (BenBella Books, 2013), with Chef Del Sroufe, and The Plant Advantage, with Benji Kurtz (Vivid Thoughts Press, 2015). He is also, with Eric Brent, one of the editors of The HappyCow Cookbook (BenBella Books, 2014).
Merzer has had dozens of productions of his plays staged throughout the country, including two productions that toured to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Three of his plays have been published by Samuel French. Merzer directed a production of his play, The Sizemore Interviews, an expose of fraud at NBC during America’s invasion of Panama, in Hollywood in 2001; Variety called it “a thoroughly compelling probe of the potential for the manufacture of news by the media.”
One of Merzer’s screenplays was produced, Enemies of Laughter (2000), starring David Paymer, Rosalind Chao, Peter Falk, and Bea Arthur.