Mark Leiren-Young | |
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| Born | (1962-09-04)September 4, 1962 (age 63) Vancouver,British Columbia, Canada |
| Education | Masters Degree in Creative Writing - University of British Columbia |
| Occupation(s) | Playwright, author, filmmaker, director, performer, satirist, podcaster, activist |
| Years active | 1985–present |
| Notable work | The Killer Whale Who Changed the World,Never Shoot a Stampede Queen,The Green Chain,Shylock,Orcas Everywhere |
| Spouse | Rayne Ellycrys Benu |
| Awards | Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour |
| Website | leiren-young |
Mark Leiren-Young (born September 4, 1962) is aCanadianplaywright, author, journalist, screenwriter, filmmaker, and performer. He lives inSaanich, British Columbia and is married to Rayne Ellycrys Benu.
Mark Leiren-Young was born inVancouver,British Columbia. He spent two years at theUniversity of British Columbia where he wrote extensively forThe Ubyssey student newspaper. His first stage play,The Initiation, which he wrote and directed while a UBC student, is the subject of his comic memoirFree Magic Secrets Revealed. He completed hisBachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre and Creative Writing at theUniversity of Victoria and graduated with distinction in 1985.[1] Leiren-Young's first full-time journalism job was atThe Williams Lake Tribune, a newspaper inWilliams Lake, British Columbia. He left Williams Lake to write and directExposé: Sometimes the World's Fair, Sometimes it Ain't a comedy revue aboutExpo 86 that played for several months at Vancouver's Firehall Theatre (now the Firehalls Arts Centre), and the 1 act playEscape From Fantasy Gardens, a play about then PremierBill Vander Zalm.[2]
Leiren-Young's documentary,The Hundred-Year-Old Whale (2017), which he wrote and directed, won the 2017 Writers Guild of Canada award for best documentary. The movie explores the life ofGranny and the history of our relationship with theSouthern resident killer whales.[1] Leiren-Young's first feature film,The Green Chain (2007), which he wrote, directed and produced, explores the issues facing dying logging communities inBritish Columbia. The movie won the El Prat de Llobregat Award at the 15th Annual Festival Internacional de Cinema de Medi Ambient (FICMA 2008) in Barcelona.[3]
Leiren-Young also has extensive television writing credits, with over 100 hours of produced work.
His love of comic books inspired his work on a number of animated series, including aReBoot episode parodyingThe X-Files (details of which were featured inEntertainment Weekly) andBeast Wars: Transformers.[4] He has written for numerous TV shows includingPSI Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal andBlood Ties.
Leiren-Young's plays have been produced inCanada, theUnited States,Europe, andAustralia. His work has been translated into French, Czech and Danish. In 2017 his playBar Mitzvah Boy was the winner of the Jewish Playwriting Contest of the Jewish Plays Project. The play has been produced in Canada and the U.S. and is being published in 2020 by Playwright's Canada Press. His award-winningShylock (Anvil Press, 1996), about the tensions surrounding theatre's most famous Jewish character.Shylock has been produced around the world.Leiren-Young frequently collaborated with directorJohn Juliani. The work they developed together includedArticles of Faith (Anvil Press, 2001), about the Anglican church's internal struggle over the issue of same sex marriage and Leiren-Young's 1991 radio drama,Dim Sum Diaries, which received international recognition when it debuted onCBC Radio'sMorningside. Leiren-Young has frequently written for and about young audiences. HisTheatre for Young Audiences scripts includeBasically Good Kids (about teens caught up in a riot) andJim (a solo show about a teen runaway obsessed withThe Doors frontmanJim Morrison).
Twenty years after his stint atThe Williams Lake Tribune, Leiren-Young turned his experiences into a comic memoir,Never Shoot A Stampede Queen (Heritage House, 2009), which won the 2009Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour.[5] Leiren-Young adapted the memoir for stage, where it received its world premiere with theWestern Canada Theatre company inKamloops,British Columbia, Canada in 2013.[6] A second production debuted atVancouver's Granville Island Stage in May, 2013. The book was adapted for the stage by Leiren-Young and directed and dramaturged byTJ Dawe.His latest memoir,Free Magic Secrets Revealed (Harbour Publishing, 2013), tells the story of his high school misadventures staging a disastrous magic show. Leiren-Young is currently adapting both memoirs for film.
Leiren-Young's news and feature writing, humour pieces, reviews, and columns have appeared in a host of publications inCanada and theUnited States, includingTime,Maclean's, andThe Utne Reader. He writes a theatre column forThe Vancouver Sun.[7] He's a contributor toThe Georgia Straight, where he has written since the mid-1980s. He has covered theToronto International Film Festival forThe Georgia Straight for the past ten years. In the fall of 2014, Leiren-Young was appointed editor ofReel West Magazine, a publication focused on the Western Canadian film industry.[8] Leiren-Young also became theUniversity of Victoria's 2014 Harvey Stevenson Southam Lecturer in Journalism and Nonfiction for the Department of Writing, the first alumnus to hold this position.[9]
Leiren-Young is a passionateenvironmentalist. He hosts the Skaana podcast where he interviews experts likePaul Watson,David Suzuki andElizabeth May about orcas, oceans and the environment.[10] He has written and spoken about how Canada'sTrans Mountain Pipeline could lead to the extinction of the endangeredSouthern resident killer whales.[11]He hosted a podcast for Vancouver's independent online news siteThe Tyee, where he often addressed issues facingBritish Columbia's old growth forests. His Tyee interviews provided the content for his book,The Green Chain: Nothing Is Ever Clear Cut (Heritage House, 2009), which examines the logging industry. Described by theNational Post as "Canada's go to guy for dolphins, whales and trees", Leiren-Young has also been dubbed "Canada's greenest writer". Many of his projects feature asustainability theme, such as his award-winning short film,The Green Film, and his feature-length movie,The Green Chain, which starsTricia Helfer. As half of the comedy duo, "Local Anxiety" with Kevin Crofton, Leiren-Young wrote and co-starred in the EarthVision award-winning TV special,Greenpieces: The World's First Eco-Comedy. He released the 2009 CDGreenpieces, and cuts from the satirical album are often featured onCBC Radio. He also coauthoredThis Crazy Time: Living our Environmental Challenge (Knopf Canada, 2012) with controversial Canadian environmentalist,Tzeporah Berman. In 2012, Leiren-Young debutedGreener Than Thou, a comic, autobiographical monologue detailing the journey of "going green".
In October 2014, Leiren-Young wrote the article "Moby Doll" forThe Walrus. The Walrus feature tells the story of the first killer whale displayed in captivity,Moby Doll, who was harpooned in the summer of 1964 off the coast ofBritish Columbia'sSaturna Island.Moby Doll survived just eighty-seven days in a waterfront pen but, during that time, changed the world's attitude towards orcas.The Walrus article was a finalist for the 2015National Magazine Awards. Leiren-Young wroteMoby Doll: The Whale that Changed the World, which aired as a radio broadcast November 7, 2014 onCBC Radio'sIdeas withPaul Kennedy. The documentary won the 2014Jack Webster Award for Best Feature Story in radio for the broadcast. In 2016, the bookThe Killer Whale Who Changed the World was published. It spent four weeks on theMaclean's bestseller list and was long-listed for the 2017RBC Taylor Prize, and short-listed for the Hubert Evans Prize. It was the winner of the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada award for the best "general interest" book.
A feature-length film documentary ofThe Killer Whale Who Changed the World is currently in post-production (2020). The movie is set to be distributed by Kinosmith (the Canadian distributors ofBlackfish).[12]
Leiren-Young won the 2017 Writers Guild of Canada Award for Best Documentary for his movie,"The Hundred-Year-Old Whale." He has received three otherWriters Guild of Canada nominations for his work in radio and film. He received the 2017 Bron Iris Award in 2017 for his "commitment to the promotion of female creators" in film and television. He won the 2009Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour for his comic memoir, "Never Shoot a Stampede Queen." Leiren-Young was the 1993 recipient of a National Magazine award for hisTheatrum column and has received twoWestern Magazine Awards, the latest presented in 2013.[13]
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