Noah Hawley

Noah Hawley is an American novelist, screenwriter and television producer, born in New York City in 1967. He writes in English, and his career moves between fiction, television and film from the late 1990s onward. He matters because he has linked the traditions of the literary novel with the author-driven television series, most visibly through the anthology Fargo.

His mother, Louise Armstrong, was a non-fiction writer and feminist activist, and his maternal grandmother was a playwright, so writing was part of his family's life. He has a twin brother, Alexi, who also writes for television. Hawley graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1989 with a degree in political science. Before writing full time he worked as a paralegal and in computer programming, and at The Legal Aid Society in New York he handled cases of child abuse and neglect, a subject his mother had explored in her books.

His novels began with A Conspiracy of Tall Men in 1998, followed by Other People's Weddings, The Punch, The Good Father, Before the Fall and Anthem. His fiction tends to start from an ordinary situation that breaks apart, and it examines guilt, family and the moral choices of unremarkable people. On television he worked as a writer and producer on Bones and created The Unusuals and My Generation. He wrote the original screenplay for the film The Alibi (2006), which is associated with an Edgar Award for best novel, though the sources link that award to the film in a way that should be read with care.

He then created Fargo, based on the Coen brothers' film, serving as writer, primary creator and executive producer. The series won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Miniseries in 2014 and accumulated many further nominations. Legion, based on the Marvel character, and Alien: Earth, drawn from the science fiction franchise, extended a style of author-driven television that mixes genres. He also directed the feature Lucy in the Sky (2019), starring Natalie Portman. His legacy lies largely in bringing a novelist's sensibility into contemporary television drama.