Dean Bakopoulos is the author of the novels Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon (A New York Times Notable Book and winner of the Friends of American Writers Fiction Award), My American Unhappiness (one of the Chicago Tribune’s best books of the year), and the bestselling novel Summerlong (Ecco/HarperCollins).
The winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an NEA fellowship in both fiction and creative nonfiction, Bakopoulos is the chair of the Cinematic Arts department at the University of Iowa, where he is a tenured professor.
A WGA screenwriter, he co-wrote the film adaptation of his first novel and is co-creator and executive producer of the HBO MAX series Made for Love, which ran for two seasons and starred Cristin Milioti and Ray Romano.
His first feature film script, Don’t Come Back from the Moon, became a New York Times’ Critics Pick directed by Bruce Thierry Cheung and starring Rashida Jones (adapted from Bakopoulos’ novel).
His original television series, The Off Weeks, is forthcoming from Apple TV+, starring Ben Stiller and Jessica Chastain and directed by Michael Showalter.
Bakopoulos is currently developing several other original projects and adaptations for television including Little Dogs for FilmNation, an original series based on his own short story “The Dog,” which is inspired by Chekhov’s classic “The Lady with the Dog.”
He holds an MFA in creative writing from UW-Madison and a BA in English Literature from the University of Michigan.