Alan Yang Pictures

Alan Yang
Yang at the 75th Annual Peabody Awards in 2016
Born	Alan Michael Yang (1983-08-22) August 22, 1983 (age 34) Riverside, California, US
Education	Harvard University
Occupation	Screenwriter, producer
Known for	Parks and Recreation, Master of None

Alan Michael Yang (born August 22, 1983) is an American screenwriter, producer and actor. He was a writer and producer for the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation, for which he received his first Emmy nomination. With Aziz Ansari, Yang co-created the Netflix series Master of None, which premiered in 2015 to critical acclaim. The series was awarded a Peabody Award, and at the 68th Emmy Awards in 2016, Yang and Anzari won for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for Master of None, which was also nominated in the Outstanding Comedy Series category. Yang also was the screenwriter of the 2014 comedy Date and Switch.

Yang was born and raised in Riverside, California. His parents were originally from Taiwan. His father, Dr. Peter Yang, is a retired OB-GYN from Huwei and his mother was a high school teacher. Yang studied biology at Harvard University and wrote for the college's humor magazine, the Harvard Lampoon. Yang also wrote for "Fire Joe Morgan", a sports journalism blog, under the pseudonym "Junior."

After graduating from Harvard, Yang tried to break into a career in comedy writing—with law school as a fall back. He wrote for Last Call with Carson Daly and contributed to South Park before he landed a job in 2008 as a staff writer for the then-upcoming NBC comedy Parks and Recreation. He was hired six months before the job began, so he wrote two screenplays, White Dad and Gay Dude.White Dad was sold to Sony in 2008 and Gay Dude was on the Hollywood blacklist before being sold to Lionsgate Films in 2011 and was released in 2014 as Date and Switch.