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David Milch

Biography

David Milch

David Milch graduated summa cum laude from Yale University, where he won the Tinker Prize. He earned a MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. He worked as a writing teacher and lecturer in English literature at Yale. During his teaching career, he assisted Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks in the writing of several college textbooks on literature. His poetry and fiction have been published in The Atlantic and Southern Review. In 1982, Milch wrote his first television script for "Hill Street Blues." Among other credits, Milch created and wrote the shows "NYPD Blue," "John from Cincinnati," "Luck" and "Deadwood."

David Milch

Books by David Milch

Life's Work: A Memoir
by David Milch - Memoir, Nonfiction

From the start, David Milch’s life seems destined to echo that of his father, a successful if drug-addicted surgeon. Almost every achievement is accompanied by an act of self-immolation, but the deepest sadnesses also contain moments of grace. Betting on racehorses and stealing booze at eight years old, mentored by Robert Penn Warren and excoriated by Richard Yates at 21, Milch never did anything by half. He got into Yale Law School only to be expelled for shooting out streetlights with a shotgun. He paused his studies at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop to manufacture acid in Cuernavaca. He created and wrote some of the most lauded television series of all time, made a family and pursued sobriety, then lost his fortune betting horses just as his father had taught him.