Mike Roe is a journalist and screenwriter. He was born in Northern California and raised in Oregon before moving to Seattle in eighth grade — a lifelong West Coaster, minus a few years in the Midwest for college.

Mike studied music, communications, and philosophy before ending with a history major. He took that love of the stories from our past into writing stories from his imagination, often inspired by aspects of his real life.

Mike worked on an indie sci-fi movie in Seattle that inspired him to move to L.A., where he started working for NPR station KPCC. He’s done everything as a journalist from covering fires to interviewing a white supremacist street artist, getting promoted several times. He now oversees arts and entertainment coverage for KPCC’s digital site LAist.

He’s spent years writing and performing comedy, graduating from the UCB improv and sketch comedy programs and being part of house sketch comedy teams at the Pack and iO West theaters. He’s also been a longtime writer for topical sketch comedy show Top Story Weekly.

He’s used his writing to explore the edges of his real life. The research for a script he wrote about the Hawaiian/Puerto Rican side of his family led to him forging a deeper connection with them. He continues to try putting a part of himself into everything he creates.