Phoef Sutton

Phoef Sutton is a New York Times Bestselling author, known for his work on the classic television comedy Cheers and the legal drama Boston Legal, among other shows. He was born in Maine and attended James Madison University in Virginia, where he began his career as an actor and playwright. While at the university, Sutton was awarded the Norman Lear Award for Comedy Playwriting, and after graduation, he had plays produced at various regional theaters around the country. His award-winning play Burial Customs was selected for publication by the Theatre Communications Group, and he was awarded a National Endowment for Arts Playwrights Fellowship.

After getting married, Sutton moved to Los Angeles and began working at NBC, where he was part of the team that created Cheers. He stayed with the show for eight years, working his way up from staff writer to executive producer, and won two Emmys and a Writer's Guild Award for his work. After Cheers, Sutton went on to produce and create a number of other television shows, including News Radio and Boston Legal, for which he won a Peabody Award, a GLAAD award, and a Television Academy Honors award. He has also worked on critically acclaimed series Terriers, The Soul Man, Defiance, and Alpha House, and has directed a short film called 'Til Death.

As a screenwriter, Sutton has adapted novels such as Mrs. Winterbourne and The Fan, and has written several movies for television. He is also a published novelist, with works such as Fifteen Minutes to Live, Dead Man: The Midnight Special, and Dead Man Reborn. In 2015, he debuted his collaborations with Janet Evanovich, Wicked Charms and Curious Minds, and published his hard-boiled crime novel Crush. His most recent novel is From Away.

Sutton has served as producer and showrunner of the Hallmark series Chesapeake Shores and hosts a podcast with Mark Jordan Legan about weird and unusual cinema called Film Freaks Forever. He currently lives in South Pasadena, California and Vinalhaven, Maine with his wife and two daughters. He can be reached on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Sutton's first name is pronounced "Feef."