Jonathan LaPoma is an award-winning, bestselling novelist, optioned screenwriter, songwriter, poet, and voice actor from Buffalo, NY. In 2005, he received a BA in history and a secondary education credential from the State University of New York at Geneseo. A few months after graduating, he and a friend took a seven-week cross-country road trip from Buffalo to the Pacific. Within a year of his return, he bought a one-way ticket to Mexico, where he lived in a small Pacific coast town for five months and traveled throughout the country in an attempt to find answers to questions that haunt many young adults trying to find their place in the world. These experiences have become the inspiration for much of his writing, which often explores themes of alienation and misery as human constructions that can be overcome through self-understanding and the acceptance of suffering.

LaPoma has written five novels, fifteen screenplays, and hundreds of songs and poems. His novels have been recommended by Kirkus Reviews and Barnes and Noble (B&N Press Presents list), have hit the #1 Amazon Bestseller lists in the “Satire,” “Urban Life,” “Metaphysical,” “Metaphysical & Visionary,” and “Religious & Inspirational” Kindle categories (USA, Canada, and Australia), and have won awards/honors in the 2018 Eric Hoffer Book Award, the 2016 and 2017 Florida Authors and Publishers Association President’s Awards, and the 2015 Stargazer Literary Prizes.

LaPoma’s fifteen screenplays have won over 160 awards/honors in various international screenwriting competitions, and Warren Zide (AMERICAN PIE, FINAL DESTINATION, THE BIG HIT), along with Wexlfish Pictures, optioned LaPoma’s screenplay HARM FOR THE HOLIDAYS in July 2017.

LaPoma was a jury member for the 2015 and 2016 San Diego International Kids Film Festival (screenplay competition) and the 2016 Cordoba International Film Festival (short film selection), and his work has appeared in 34thParallel Magazineand TODAY & YESTERDAY. He’s also a member of The Authors Guild and Gotham Ghostwriters.

He lives in Mexico City, where he plays in the rock band THE CROOKED EASTwhich is ReverbNation’s top-ranked rock band in Mexico City, and #2 in all of Mexico.

LaPoma has dubbed several films, commercials, Netflix and YouTube series in English, and he also translated the subtitles for the feature-length documentary ENTRE TIERRAS in English.

LaPoma is repped by Alexandra Maramenides of the Reve Agency.