Joshua Brand

Joshua Brand is an American television writer, director, and producer who created St. Elsewhere, I'll Fly Away, A Year in the Life, and Northern Exposure with his writing-and-producing partner John Falsey, with whom he worked through 1994. He was also a writer and consulting producer of FX's 2013–18 series The Americans.

Early life Joshua Brand was born to a Jewish family and raised in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York City. He graduated magna cum laude from City College of New York, after which he was given a fellowship to Columbia University, where he received a Master of Arts degree with honors in English Literature.

Career His play Babyface was produced in Los Angeles in 1978 and was selected as a semi-finalist in the Great American Play Contest sponsored by the Louisville Actors Theater. Another play, Grunts, was produced Off-Broadway at the Wonderhouse Theatre in New York City. In 2012, his full-length play The Real Me was a finalist at the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference. In an unprecedented move by Public Broadcasting, PBS bought the rights to I'll Fly Away and rebroadcast the series in its entirety in the leadup to their original two-hour movie based on the show.

Brand and John Falsey created the short-lived series Going to Extremes, which was filmed entirely on the island of Jamaica. He has been nominated for eleven Emmy Awards (winning three, as noted above), as well as winning two Peabody Awards (Northern Exposure, I'll Fly Away), two Golden Globe Awards (Northern Exposure), along with the Humanitas Prize, the Producers Guild of America Award, and the Environmental Media Award for Ongoing Commitment. Falsey and Brand split as a team in 1994, with Falsey essentially leaving the industry, but in 2013, Brand and Falsey jointly received the Laurel Award for TV Writing Achievement from the Writers Guild of America.

Since 2013, Brand has been a writer and consulting producer of the acclaimed FX series The Americans; he wrote or co-wrote four episodes during the first season and has written two episodes in each subsequent season. The writers of the series, including Brand, received the Best Dramatic Series award at the 69th Writers Guild of America Awards, and they were also nominated for that award in 2015.

His directing credits include the feature film A Pyromaniac's Love Story, the television movies Wall to Wall Records and Homeward Bound, the television pilot Gemini Man, and episodes of thirtysomething and Joan of Arcadia. Brand was also nominated for an Emmy and a DGA Award for directing the two-hour I'll Fly Away pilot.