Mike Reiss

Origins and early life

Mike Reiss was born on 15 September 1959 in Bristol, Connecticut, to a Jewish family, the middle child of five; his mother was a local journalist and his father a doctor, and he has said he felt an outsider in the small New England town where he grew up.

Work and career

He studied English at Harvard, wrote for the Harvard Lampoon, and formed with Al Jean the writing partnership that would run for decades. The two joined the original writing staff of The Simpsons in 1989, worked on the thirteen episodes of the first season, and became executive producers and showrunners for seasons three and four, from 1991 to 1993, the years most often named as the show's peak. Reiss has won four Primetime Emmy Awards for the series, and he and Jean went on to create The Critic in 1994.

He has been the most explicit of the show's writers about its Jewish material, and the Forward ran a piece on how he brought Judaism into Springfield; Krusty the Clown's Jewish family, Rabbi Krustofsky and the Springfield temple all belong to the era he ran.

Recognition

He has also published seventeen children's books, including How Murray Saved Christmas, won an Edgar Award for the mystery story Cro-Magnon PI, and written the memoir Springfield Confidential in 2018.