Los Angeles-based writer, artist and founder of Original Plumbing.
Photo by Sela Shiloni
Amos Mac is an out trans television writer currently a writer/producer on the comedy series Clean Slate for Amazon Freevee. Born in the Deep South and raised in the Philly area, Amos Mac’s work explores identity, second coming of age narratives, and intergenerational relationships through a queer lens. With a history that includes decades as a visual artist, magazine editor and independent publisher, Amos first ventured into television as an associate producer for VICELAND’s Gaycation hosted by Elliot Page, and held support staff roles on Amazon’s Transparent and AMC's The Son before landing his first staff writing job on the new Gossip Girl for HBO Max. He’s been staffed in writers rooms for supernatural drama series The Left/Right Game (Amazon Studios), and season 2 of Y: The Last Man (FX for Hulu).
With a love for re-imagining trans history, Amos Mac co-wrote the documentary feature film No Ordinary Man with Aisling Chin-Yee. Focusing on the life of jazz musician and unlikely trans icon Billy Tipton, No Ordinary Man premiered at Toronto International Film Festival in 2020.
Amos made a splash as a cultural creator in 2009 as a founding editor of Original Plumbing; the first print magazine in America dedicated to trans male culture. Primarily featuring photography by Mac, OP was inspired by 1990s teen magazine aesthetics and beefcake pictorials of the mid-20th century, and incited by the lack of trans masculine representation in the media. Published for 10 years and 20 issues, OP concluded its run with the release of the book, Original Plumbing: The Best of Ten Years of Trans Male Culture, released in 2019 by the Feminist Press and co-edited with OP collaborator Rocco Kayiatos.
As a photographer, Amos Mac has exhibited in galleries internationally, was featured in dozens of publications including The New York Times, Interview, and Vogue Italia, and lives on in multiple museum collections. He shot the groundbreaking Fall '15 campaign for Swedish fashion brand & Other Stories, featuring an all trans cast and crew. The iconic collaborative series he created with artist Zackary Drucker formed the content of his 2011 art publication Translady Fanzine, with an alternative selection of images exhibited as Distance is Where the Heart is, Home is Where you Hang Your Heart, at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.
A 2018 Lambda Literary Writer's Retreat Fellow for Young Adult fiction, Amos returned to Lambda’s Writer’s Retreat in 2022 as their first ever screenwriting faculty member. His personal story was featured in the HBO documentary The Trans List, and he’s been honored on the OUT 100 and the TRANS 100.