About Greg
A life observed through story.
Greg CHEN is an award-winning screenwriter and author whose stories place private lives inside the forces of history, politics, and social change.
Biography
Greg writes from lived experience, a sustained interest in Chinese history, and the private choices people make inside large public systems.
His childhood during China's Cultural Revolution remains a source of lived material for A Red Madrasa School Under Mao, Homeless Dogs Never Bite, Three Generations of Women Under Half the Sky, and An Acetylene Light. The work does not treat history as distant spectacle; it follows memory, moral choice, resilience, and the costs carried across generations.
Greg graduated from University College London in 2008. He has also worked as a screenplay translator and performer.
Screenplays
Image, logic, and conflict.
Greg believes the ability to write is hidden in our genes. He turns images he sees, as well as images from dreams, into lines on the page.
For him, the most important elements of a story are logic and conflict. Characters should be memorable, whether they are exceptionally good or villainous from head to toe.
Experience
From production to the page.
Greg entered the film industry at Sino-Scope Film in London, where he worked in script translation, on-location interpreting, voice dubbing, and the drafting of daily and weekly shooting schedules.
The work inspired him to write his own scripts and sharpened his sense of what audiences deserve: stories that are focused, distinctive, and alive. A few years later, he published his first novel, Uncle G's Love Story, in Hong Kong.
How I started
A first short screenplay.
Greg's first short screenplay, Five Sheep Versus Two Human Lives, was inspired by memories of childhood. He wrote the ten-page script using the free version of Fade In, and it was selected by the Berlin Flash Film Festival.
That early encouragement, together with the screenwriting courses he found on YouTube, helped him develop the discipline to keep writing.
Writing life
Stories that grow into features.
Three years of lockdown during the pandemic became Greg's most productive period. He spent each day brainstorming and writing, completing several feature-length screenplays.
Short stories often become larger works: White Is Not a Color became Assimilation; Some Other Dignity became A Red Madrasa School Under Mao; and I Am Not Picky became Three Generations of Women Under Half the Sky.
Childhood memories, work, biographies, and stories shared by friends all enter that process. His experiences as an international student also led to stories about Chinese students living overseas, which eventually became the feature screenplay Waterdrops Insoluble.
His first two published collections bring together ten scripts about childhood, family, education, faith, gender, migration, identity, and political power. He is currently developing Disobedient Citizens, about women from China, North Korea, and Iran seeking freedom in Western countries.