Daniel Lipman

Daniel Lipman, together with his partner, Ron Cowen, has written extensively for theater and television.

For theater, they wrote the book for the musical, Betty Blue Eyes. Based on Alan Bennett's screenplay for the film A Private Function, with a score by Olivier Award winning composer and lyricist George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, it was produced in London's West End at the Novello Theatre by Sir Cameron Mackintosh and directed by Sir Richard Eyre. It received widespread critical acclaim and was nominated for three Olivier Awards including Best Musical, Best Actress and Best Actor. It was also short-listed for the Evening Standard Award for Best Musical.

Their most recent theater collaboration is a musical adaptation of Graham Greene's novel, Travels With My Aunt. With a score also by Stiles and Drewe, it was produced at the Chichester Festival Theatre.

For television, Cowen and Lipman were the creators, executive producers and writers of the American version of Queer As Folk, the ground-breaking series which ran for five seasons on Showtime.

They were also the creators, executive producers and writers of the Emmy Award winning and Golden Globe nominated drama series, Sisters, which starred Swoosie Kurtz, Sela Ward, George Clooney, Ashley Judd and Paul Rudd. It ran for six seasons on NBC.

Prior to that, Cowen and Lipman received the Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for their teleplay of An Early Frost, which they also associate-produced. The highly-acclaimed NBC drama was the first major film - for television or features - about AIDS. It starred Gena Rowlands, Ben Gazzara, Aidan Quinn and Sylvia Sidney. Nominated for 14 Emmy Awards, it also won a Peabody Award and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Television Movie.

The team also wrote and co-produced the NBC telefilm, The Love She Sought, which starred Angela Lansbury, Denholm Elliot and Cynthia Nixon, for which they won the Christopher Award, and were nominated for a Writers Guild Award for Best Teleplay.

In addition, Cowen wrote adaptations for the PBS series, The American Short Story, of Sherwood Anderson's I'm A Fool and of Willa Cather's Paul's Case, for which he also won a Peabody Award.

Cowen and Lipman met and began their careers as playwrights at the Eugene O'Neill Playwrights' Conference in Waterford, Connecticut.

Currently, they are adapting Katherine Anne Porter's novel, Ship Of Fools, for the stage.

Lipman attended Boston University School of Fine Arts for undergraduate studies, where his play was the first student play to be produced at the School. He then received a Shubert Fellowship to the University of Michigan's Professional Theatre Program, where he was awarded the Avery Hopwood Award for Playwriting.

He is honored to serve on the Board of Trustees of the O'Neill Theater Center.