BOOKS & SCRIPTS
DEBUT MEMOIR
REPRESENTED BY DAN MILASCHEWSKI
UTA PUBLISHING
The Key to loving who I am
is to stop needing
all the things
that made me
need you.
-Reed Cowan
Reed Cowan's first memoir, To Stop Needing All the Things, is a meditation on the practice of shame, the catastrophic costs of living a life practicing shame and the power of reclaiming dignity through authentic living. This memoir is Reed's search to find the origins of the practice shame in his family history, in the Mormon religion and culture of his birth, and perpetuated and practiced by Reed in response to a childhood secret, and religious abuses in his
rural Utah community that led to a beating that would change the course of his life forever.
SECOND MEMOIR
CURRENLTY IN FIRST DRAFT PHASE
Reed Cowan's second memoir Up and Running chronicles his work as a journalist in breaking news situations at the television station known for personifying the term IF IT BLEEDS, IT LEADS. Reed confronted a new PTSD diagnosis after the violent death of his four year old son, Wesley Cowan while also starting work for the top-rated US television station known for graphic breaking news content. This work is a mediation not only on how men grieve and process trauma differently than women, but also the story of a man whose work life and personal tragedy intersected in a work environment and culture that is often numb to the personal impacts of tragedies that befall the real lives of the people whose stories journalists tell.
THIRD MEMOIR
CURRENTLY IN FIRST DRAFT PHASE
Reed Cowan's third memoir, Obitchuary, tells the story of his upbringing as the grandson of two grandmothers who were very different from each other in life, and in death. One grandmother, Fernie, was known by her family to be the long-suffering saint of the family, the glue of her family and the pride of all who knew and loved her. Reed's other grandmother, Sarah, was notorious for mean, awful and hateful. Both women lived only minutes apart. Both women died only minutes apart. Fernie died surrounded by a loving family who grieved her death. Sarah died a lonely death, with a small group of family members gathered at her coffin, one commenting, "she put the bitch in obituary." Years after Sarah's death, and having experienced his own tragedy, Reed went on a search to try to understand whether Sarah really was the mean witch he and others believed her to be. What he uncovered shed light on the damage of patriarchy in a rural Mormon town, and the perpetuation of family narratives that write some women off as "just mean and without morals." This book is not only Reed's love letter to both grandmothers, but to all women who are victims of domestic violence, and religious communities who fail to see and fight for women.
FOURTH MEMOIR
CURRENTLY IN FIRST DRAFT MODE
Rebounding from tragedy, Reed Cowan leaves television news and a budding career as an award-winning Sundance Film Festival documentarian to hit rock bottom in the remote Utah ghost town of Myton, known for the famous Myton Mormon Curse. Pulling into the remnants of the town infested with jackrabbits and tumbleweeds, Reed erases his old life and uses his savings to buy the former farm house of his grandparents, and several adjacent homes, land and a broken down and rat-infested century-old church. As he works to restore the homes and the old church, family secrets emerge, revealing relationship fault lines that seem insurmountable and people as remnants of old dreams. The heartwarming journey within the pages of Church in a Ghost Town reveal to Reed and the readers of this book, the people we have loved and lost, do not exist in people, do not exist in places and do not exist in things. The people we have loved and lost, like our dreams, live only within our hearts.
STREAMING SERIES
CURRENTLY OUT FOR CONSIDERATION
THE 12 (WGA Registration Number 1711953) is an American television drama exploring whether an unchanging church wrought with secrets and steeped in tradition can long-survive in not only an ever-changing world, but also in a digital age where secrets don't last long. Set in Salt Lake City, Utah, the series exposes secrets unique to Mormonism in similar fashion to Dan Brown's THE DAVINCI CODE franchise. The rituals and traditions of THE 12 elderly men (whose seniority has afforded them ascension to the highest levels of leadership in the fifteen million member church) are exposed against the backdrop of modern-day issues, which threaten to shake Mormonism to its very core.
The 12 pits the patriarchy against two women united in a mission to expose secrets amidst the backdrop of a ticking clock, a PR engine, and an internal struggle for power.
HUFFINGTON POST CONTRIBUTOR
