OCTOBER’S SPECIAL GUEST SPEAKER: JOHN SACRET YOUNG
Multi-Award-Winning & Emmy Nominated Writer/Director/Producer (West Wing, Romero, China Beach)

JOHN SACRET YOUNGis launching a new series and also has a book coming out this fall, which will be available for purchase at this breakfast. Earlier this year, John Sacret Young received his sixth Writers Guild Award for the West Wing. Young co-created and served as executive producer of the landmark series China Beach. For his work on the series, Young received a Golden Globe Award, a People's Choice Award, five Emmy nominations, and four other nominations from the Writers Guild of America. Young won the WGA Awards for Souvenirs and the Peabody Award for Vets, two episodes of China Beach that he directed.

His credits also include the first and only American miniseries about the Vietnam conflict, A Rumor of War, which landed him a second Writers Guild of America Award, and Special Olympics, which received the Humanitas Prize and the Kennedy Foundation Award, Young wrote the Oscar-nominated motion picture, Testament, just released on DVD, with Jane Alexander, Kevin Costner, and Rebecca De Mornay; and the critically acclaimed film, Romero, starring Raul Julia. Both received Christopher Awards.

In 1999, Young won another Humanitas Prize for the miniseries Thanks for a Grateful Nation, about Desert Storm, which he wrote and executive-produced. Since then, Young has written, directed, and produced the exotic crime thriller Keys starring Marg Helgenberger and Gary Dourdan; Sirens, about a police-involved shooting and starring Dana Delany; and King of the World, based on New Yorker editor in chief, David Remnick's book about the young Muhammad Ali. Additionally, he has helped create and executive-produced the TV series VR-5, Orleans, and Level 9. In 2003, he was consulting producer on the DGA and PGA-nominated and WGA Award-winning FX film, The Pentagon Papers, about Daniel Ellsberg and starring James Spader, Alan Arkin, Claire Forlani, and Paul Giamatti. Both this season and last, Young has served as consultant and supervising producer on The West Wing, including writing the 100th episode. This year, he also wrote, directed, and produced the movie of the week, Deceit, shot in New Zealand and starring Marlo Thomas.

His novel, The Weather Tomorrow, was praised by such publications as Newsweek, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. The New Yorker called him "a writer of effortless dexterity and a true, unaffected originality.The story he tells cuts right to the bone." Digby Diehl proclaimed, "Young is the first new voice in decades who might be compared to the young Willaim Faulkner."