Ryan Knighton: Blind screenwriter, producer, professor and surfer-on the musicality of syntax
Ryan Knighton is an internationally acclaimed blind author, screenwriter, journalist and performer . His two memoirs, Cockeyed and C’mon Papa, received numerous award nominations, including the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humor. He has contributed to the American radio programs This American Life and The Moth, and has written for The New York Times, Outside, Esquire, The globe and Mail, Popular Mechanics, The Observer, The Believer, Men’s Health, Afar, Vancouver, Vice, The Sunday Telegraph, The National Post and Salon, among other newspapers and magazines.
His travel writing has taken him around the world and earned him two Thomas Lowell Awards, an Eddie/Aussie Award and a James Beard Media Award nomination. He is also a Sundance Screenwriting Lab fellow and the recipient of the 2009 Alfred Sloan Prize from the Tribeca Film Institute for the feature adaptation of his memoir Cockeyed, which Ryan Reynolds is attached to direct.
As a screenwriter, Knighton has written for Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox, and has created several original pilots for FX. Most recently he has served as a producer writer for three seasons on the network drama In the Dark. Knighton is a sought after public speaker and storyteller who has performed at theaters, conferences and universities around the world, including NASA, the University of London, UCLA and MIT. He lives on Vancouver Island in the village of Ucluelet. Surfing is his preoccupation.
@ryanknighton
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