Bio
Mark B. Perry grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, where his third grade teacher, Roslyn Hartsell, instilled in him a love of words and storytelling. His childhood obsession with Carl Reiner‘s The Dick Van Dyke Show then fueled his passion to pursue a screenwriting career. After all, if what Rob Petrie, Buddy Sorrell, and Sally Rogers did all day—playing darts, cracking wise, and ordering lunch—was a real job, it sure looked like a great way to make a living. Mark’s first taste of television writing came when he was eight years old: a story he wrote and submitted to local station WSB-TV’s afternoon Popeye Club was read over the air by the show’s host, Officer Don. From that day forward, Mark was hooked. Because the University of Georgia (Go Dawgs!) lacked a prestigious film school at the time, he cobbled his own degree together from film and TV classes in the Henry W. Grady School of Journalism, supplemented by studies in playwriting, acting, directing, and cinema in the theater department. Before graduating with a bachelor’s in broadcast journalism, Mark won the Claude P. Callison Award (or “Claudie” as it was known back in the day) for excellence in filmmaking by a student. After a brief sojourn writing and producing industrials for the local newspapers and a variety of companies including Southern Bell, General Motors, and Oral-B, Mark moved to Los Angeles in 1986 where he worked as an office temp by day while churning out sample feature screenplays and television scripts by night. Two years later, a chance viewing of a new series called The Wonder Years changed his trajectory forever. Mark’s spec script for that top-ten show led to a freelance episode and a staff writer gig where the highlight of his first day in the room was the announcement that his spec script, “Summer Song,” was to be purchased and produced as the premiere of the 1989-90 season. After racking up eighteen writing credits on The Wonder Years, a Humanitas nomination for his Thanksgiving episode, “The Ties That Bind,” and his first producer title, Mark went on to write, produce, and sometimes serve as show-runner on such diverse series as Northern Exposure, Picket Fences, Moon Over Miami, Law & Order (which still sometimes gets him excused from jury duty), Party of Five, Push (to this day a sensitive subject), Time of Your Life, Mike White’s Pasadena, First Years, That Was Then, One Tree Hill, Windfall, and What About Brian. After helping to successfully launch the second season of ABC’s Brothers & Sisters in 2007, Mark was a co-executive producer on CBS’s Ghost Whisperer, then an executive producer on the first two (and arguably best) seasons of ABC’s Revenge, followed by a stint as executive producer on NBC’s Heartbeat.
In 2018-19, Mark wrote the “Two Doors Down” episode of Netflix’s Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings, an LGBTQ-themed episode starring Academy Award-winners Melissa Leo and Ray McKinnon, along with Andy Mientus, Michael J. Willet, and Katie Stevens. It was directed by Wendy Stanzler and won a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Individual Episode.
As a writer-producer on the first season on David E. Kelley‘s Picket Fences, Mark shared an Emmy Award for Outstanding Dramatic Series.
For his “Falsies” episode of Party of Five, Mark was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Achievement in Dramatic Writing.
And for his writing and producing services on that same series, Mark shared a Golden Globe Award for Best Drama.
Currently, Mark is a guest screenwriter at the LA Writers Center where he teaches a popular television pilot writing class with Che’Rae Adams. He lives with his husband, Mark W. Knowles, and their canine companion, Little Edie, in the hills adjacent to Hollywood.
