Author / Screenwriter / Publisher / Editor / Book Packager / Playwright / Journalist

“Stafford has no shortage of material . . . Ever the Renaissance man.”
— The Atlanta Journal / The Atlanta Constitution

Clay Stafford began his entrepreneurial writing métier by making a whopping $6 off a short story he wrote when he was ten for the school newspaper, a publication which he also co-founded. Armed with an 8mm camera and rolls of B&W film, he began to churn out edited films reminiscent of The Great Train Robbery (1903). Within three years, he was writing, producing, and directing one-act plays for local theaters. At fourteen, he founded a professional film production company – a boy, a camera, and a notebook – writing and producing commercials and radio spots for local businesses. As a now award-winning author, screenwriter, TV series creator, and head writer, Clay Stafford’s media and literary work has expanded to sixteen languages and his clients have included ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, numerous independent production companies, and Esquire Magazine, to name a few, and his short stories, essays, and poems are published periodically in national literary journals. As a playwright, he has had four of his latter plays premier in Los Angeles. As a journalist and columnist, he has worked freelance for Gannett and Ochs-Sulzberger newspapers, and Killer Nashville Magazine. His books and tapes on the entertainment business have been offered at notable “media” bookstores including Oxfords, Borders, Samuel French, Larry Edmunds, and others, and have been used as teaching tools at several major universities. He has critiqued books, plays, and films for a domestic and worldwide print and media audience (examples include BookPage, CitySearch, Killer Nashville, and Killer Nashville Magazine), where he conducted interviews with authors and filmmakers about their works. Major publishers such as Harcourt Brace and Gallery Books have used his influence on book jackets as a part of their international promotion. As a literary executive, he has edited several books and companion guides for PBS to accompany national TV series, and has been Editor-in-Chief, Publisher, and Book Packager for PBS Miami, American Blackguard Entertainment, and Clay Stafford Books. His novel retellings for children for Dalmatian Press have sold an estimated 3.9 million copies and have been translated into several languages (the books even made a guest appearance on the bookshelf behind actress Diane Lane in the feature film Must Love Dogs.) In 2018, Clay founded the literary imprint Clay Stafford Books to promote new books by authors other than himself. Sony Pictures Television optioned his TV series, Richland Heights. His latest screenplay was Pork Pie Hat, based upon an optioned novel by Peter Straub. His documentary feature film One of the Miracles: The Inge Meyring Smith Story received rave reviews from film festivals and critics alike. His current literary anthology is Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded from Diversion Books. He has written under the pseudonyms Roberta Bendell, John Mariani (travel editor of Esquire Magazine), the Russian author Yalc Droffats, and others. He maintains his professional membership with national writers’ organizations including The Authors Guild, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, and more. He is presently writing a forthcoming crime thriller series, a literary mystery set in the American South, and scribbling notes for several nonfiction books. In addition to his other activities, he is a staff writer for Writer’s Digest Magazine where he writes the monthly column “Killer Writers.”