Born and raised in Colorado, Adam went east (Yale) to study playwriting, the Far East (China) to live with practicing Daoists, and then settled in the Far West (California), first to continue his Chinese studies, later to write for the movies. Having ventured along the East-West axis, he is considering a shift to the North-South axis.

Adam can’t be certain if his odd sensibility should be blamed on growing up in a house full of bizarre art or on watching Eraserhead too many times while young.

As a screenwriter, Adam has written for U.S. and Chinese studios as well as independent producers. He tends to work in the drama-to-thriller spectrum. His original screenplay, 3 Nights in the Desert, starred Amber Tamblyn, Wes Bentley, and Vincent Piazza, and premiered at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. He later wrote the screenplay for the feature, Walden: Life in the Woods, inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s classic and starring Academy Award Nominee Demián Bichir and featuring Lynn Cohen and TJ Miller. Adam has drawn on his extensive background in Chinese language and culture, writing a China-set script for Universal Pictures International and Marc Platt productions, and co-writing the Chinese fantasy film Asura. 

Stage plays include Down to This and The Great Divide which both premiered in the Bay Area. The Great Divide has received subsequent university productions and was nominated for the national Steinberg Playwriting Award.

Adam’s other honors include a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, a Djerassi Colony Residency, a San Francisco Film Society Screenwriting Award, a UC Berkeley Consortium for the Arts Playwriting Grant, the Parker Huang Fellowship from Yale, and the a UC Berkeley Powers Grant for film study in China.

Fluent in Mandarin, Adam has traveled to and lived in Daoist temples throughout China, especially the Zhongnan Mountains, a region with a longstanding tradition of hermits.

Adam also has extensive teaching experience, including graduate student instruction at UC Berkeley, tutoring at Prison University in San Quentin, and workshops at institutions from DePaul University to the Ghetto Film School in L.A. He currently serves as an adjunct professor of screenwriting in National University’s MFA program. He earned a B.A. in theater and literature at Yale and a M.A. in Chinese literature with a designated emphasis in film at UC Berkeley.

Adam has uncanny skills in useless activities like ring toss and foosball. Despite an affinity for gray skies, he lives in sunny Southern California with his wife, two small children, and an extremely small dog.