Alan Yang

Alan Michael Yang (; born August 22, 1983) is an American screenwriter, producer and director. He was a writer and producer for the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation, for which he received his first Emmy nomination. With Aziz Ansari, Yang co-created the Netflix series Master of None, which premiered in 2015 to critical acclaim. The series was awarded a Peabody Award, and at the 68th Emmy Awards in 2016, Yang and Ansari won for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for Master of None and became the first writers of Asian descent to win in the category, which was also nominated in the Outstanding Comedy Series category. Yang also was the screenwriter of the 2014 comedy Date and Switch. In 2018, Yang co-created the Amazon Video series Forever. Early life Yang was born and raised in Riverside, California. His parents were originally from Taiwan. His father is a retired OB-GYN from Huwei and his mother is a high school math teacher. Yang attended high school at Riverside Poly High School in Riverside, California. He studied biology at Harvard University, graduating at age 20. While at Harvard, Yang wrote for the college's humor magazine, the Harvard Lampoon, where he first began doing comedy. Yang said in an interview that he chose to study Biology when his parents told him math and science were a "safe zone" for people of color. While at Harvard, Yang began following the Boston Red Sox in college and developed an interest in baseball. This led to writing for "Fire Joe Morgan", a sports journalism blog, under the pseudonym "Junior." He wrote the blog alongside Michael Schur, who was a producer and writer for The Office at the time. The two would later work together on Parks and Recreation and The Good Place. Career Writing After graduating from Harvard, Yang tried to break into a career in comedy writing—with law school as a fall back. Yang was named "10 Screenwriters to Watch" by Variety magazine in 2009. He wrote for Last Call with Carson Daly and contributed to South Park before he landed a job in 2008 as a staff writer for the then-upcoming NBC comedy Parks and Recreation. He was hired six months before the job began, so he wrote two screenplays, White Dad and Gay Dude. White Dad was sold to Sony in 2008 and Gay Dude was on the Hollywood blacklist before being sold to Lionsgate Films in 2011 and was released in 2014 as Date and Switch.