David Mamet was born in Chicago in 1947. He studied at Goddard College in Vermont and at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theater in New York. He taught at Goddard College, the Yale Drama School, and New York University, and regularly lectures to classes at the Atlantic Theater Company, of which he is a founding member. He is the author of the acclaimed plays Oleanna, Speed-the-Plow, Glengarry Glen Ross, American Buffalo, and Sexual Perversity in Chicago. He has also written screenplays for such films as Homicide, House of Games, and the Oscar-nominated The Verdict, four collections of essays, a novel, and a book of poems. His plays have won the Pulitzer Prize and the Obie Award.