Shawn Lawrence Otto

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shawn Lawrence Otto is a Minnesota-native political strategist, speaker, writer, filmmaker, and co-screenwriter of the movie House of Sand and Fog, with Vadim Perelman.

He lives on a hobby farm near Marine on St. Croix with his wife, Rebecca Otto, the current Minnesota State Auditor. His first screenwriting was Shining White, that won him the Heathcote Award, the McKnight Fellowship and the Barry Morrow Fellowship. To be released in 2009, he is the screenwriter and director of the movie Dreams of a Dying Heart.

During the Hollywood writers' strike in 2007 and 2008, Otto helped organize and became the CEO of Science Debate 2008, a national campaign to raise the profile of science and technology issues in the American political dialogue, by urging presidential candidates to debate science policy issues like climate change, men's health, and American economic competitiveness. The campaign is cosponsored by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Council on Competitiveness, PBS Nova, and NOW on PBS, and its signers include over 170 major American universities and other leading organizations, nearly 100 university presidents, and dozens of Nobel laureates, all told representing over 125 million Americans of all parties.

[edit] References

• de Turenne, Veronique. "House of Sand and Fog", Variety, January 5, 2004. Retrieved on 2006-10-23. (English) 
• "Star Tribune, Minneapolis, C.J. column", Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News, August 3, 2006. Retrieved on 2006-10-23. (English)