Stuart Connelly

Author, director and screenwriter Stuart Connelly has been
a professional storyteller for more than twenty-five years. A graduate of Syracuse University's prestigious S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Connelly has written speeches for Fortune 500 executives, reported for daily newspapers, edited a national magazine, and, at a career low point, once wrote a handful of jokes for the White House.

His debut film, 2013’s The Suspect (starring This Is Us’ Sterling K. Brown), was the first feature ever presented as part of a Brookings Institute panel and has been distributed around the world. It can currently be seen on Netflix. His latest film as writer and director, American Gothic, is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

As an author, he has been a National Educational Press Association Award recipient for his work with Scholastic Publishing. His writing has been featured in the Washington Post, Al Jazeera America, the Huffington Post. Stuart also founded the San Francisco-based ad agency Topeka.

With Civil Rights icon Clarence B. Jones, Connelly is the
co-author of two bestselling books; Behind the Dream:
The Making of the Speech That Transformed a Nation and Uprising: Understanding Attica, Revolution, and the Incarceration State.

A native of New York, Connelly currently divides his time between Manhattan and his studio/farm in rural Pennsylvania.