December 29 - 17 BLOCKS

Biography

Davy Rothbart is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, bestselling author and journalist, frequent contributor to public radio's This American Life, and the creator of Found Magazine. Rothbart's film MEDORA, about a resilient high-school basketball team in a dwindling Indiana town, based on the New York Times story by Pulitzer Prize winner John Branch, was Executive Produced by Steve Buscemi and Stanley Tucci, and premiered at the 2013 SXSW Film Festival. MEDORA later aired on the acclaimed PBS series INDEPENDENT LENS and won an Emmy Award. Rothbart previously directed two documentaries about the activist band Rise Against, which became best-selling DVDs in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and Sweden. A separate short film featuring Rise Against's song "Make It Stop" was created for Dan Savage's ItGetsBetter project and later won an MTV Music Video Award.

Rothbart's radio stories featured on This American Life have reached more than 20 million listeners, and his books Found and My Heart Is An Idiot have debuted on The New York Times Bestseller List. He has made multiple appearances on The Late Show With David Letterman, been featured on ABC's 20/20, Last Call with Carson Daly, MSNBC, and NPR's All Things Considered, and been profiled in The New Yorker and The New York Times. A native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, Rothbart now lives in Los Angeles, California.