Mal Karman, Division Avenue High School class of 1960, has built an impressive award-winning career

His 1960 Division Avenue High School yearbook photo and a recent shot

Mal Karman won a National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (Emmy) Award, the Paul Newman-Joanne Woodward Scott Newman Award and a Silver Medal at the New York International Film Festival for the script of “Wasted: A True Story,” a prime-time TV special on drug abuse prevention that received a laudatory editorial from the Washington Post.

He has worked numerous times as a script doctor for Oscar-winning producer Saul Zaentz (including “Three Warriors” “At Play in the Fields of the Lord” and “D.O.A.”), penned the sequel to the animated “Lord of the Rings” for Zaentz, and co-wrote "Shooting Stars" in Paris with Oscar-winning screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere.

At the New Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, Karman directed his comic drama, “The Bones of Simon Bottle,” which ran for eight weeks, and for which he was awarded a Marin Arts Council playwriting grant.

As a book author, he wrote the political thriller “The Foxbat Spiral” (now in its second printing) and the nonfiction “The Poison River,” and is one of the featured writers in “Encounters With the Middle East,” which recently won the prestigious Lowell Thomas Award for Best Book of the Year in category.

Karman has also worked for directors Francis Ford Coppola, Ralph Bakshi, Keith Merrill and Hector Babenco, and for political analyst-TV commentator and author Bill Moyers.

A longtime San Francisco resident, he traveled to Iran for research on a new novel and to shoot footage for a forthcoming documentary. He was editor-director on the documentaries, “Volleyball Nation” and “Heaven in the Headlands,” the latter for the Yosemite National Institutes, and wrote and directed “Etude in Black,” a drama about a young pianist and her conflicting passions.

He is a member of the Writers Guild of America, the Media Workers Guild of Northern California and the Authors Guild.

Awards
• Three individual National Journalism Honor Society writing awards (news, sports, features).
• Paul Newman-Joanne Woodward Scott Newman Drug Abuse Prevention Award.
• California Arts Commission Playwriting Award.
• Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (Emmy) Award.
• Founder/director of International Volleyball Club of San Francisco consisting of hundreds of participants from 31 countries.
• Commendation in 2004 from Terry McAuliffe for providing ideas for Democratic strategy in presidential campaign.
• Edited Tom Steinstra's Pulitzer Prize-winning series on rafting the treacherous Owyhee River.
• Silver Award, New York International Film Festival.
• Diane Thomas Screenwriting Award
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Mal is an avid volleyball player, got his first byline as a teenager and still believes he is 17-years-old. He was the best man at your blogger's wedding in 1968.