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Anthony J. Bufort - Anthony J. Bufort

Biography

Anthony (a.k.a. Tony) has held great appreciation for the written word since he was a boy. He received much encouragement from English and creative writing teachers in high school, who fought (though lost) for him to graduate with honors in English even though he was a transfer student who had only been at Paramus High for two years at the time of his graduation. His creative writing teacher once told him, "The world is gonna hear from you some day!". At age 40, after a career in software engineering taken up to pay the bills while raising a family, he is now working to make that happen.

Anthony has and continues to explore many different formats of writing - TV and film scripts, short stories, plays, drabbles, articles, poetry - but is focused on 10-minute plays at present, currently working on his fifth and aiming at winning a contest or two and entering actual production. Dialogue is what he is attracted to most, and for him, there are few feelings in the world like writing a great piece of back-and-forth between two people which actually means something, or provokes feeling, or both.

Anthony Bufort counts himself among those who have been greatly influenced by the life and work of Rod Serling. Insightful, emotional, and entertaining, Serling's work remains many decades later a shining example of TV's potential approached. Anthony believes that television as a medium continues to hold great promise, and laments that, even after fifty-plus years, that potential has hardly been lived up to. The history of TV consists of some bright moments against a largely dull landscape, one which reveals how far television has come from it's theatre-influenced roots, and not for the better.

He is presently on a mission to explore the vast array of classic and modern science fiction and fantasy available in print and audiobook format. This mission, while only recently begun, has already reaped him rewards, chief among them thus far being a familiarity with and great appreciation of the writing of Harlan Ellison.

Scriptwriting remains a passion, with Anthony having authored several TV spec scripts and the preliminary draft for a romantic comedy feature film. He harbors dreams of selling scripts to Hollywood, squirreling away a pile of cash, and developing his own television series (or writing for a quality Twilight Zone type anthology series).

Running roughshod across all genres and styles here, some of Anthony's favorite writers are Rod Serling, Harlan Ellison, Dave Thomas, Mark Twain, Douglas Adams, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Education

Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy / Greek and Latin Languages, Rutgers University (1988 - 1992)

Master's coursework in Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania (1996 - 1997)