Stephen Most

Stephen Most is an author, playwright, and documentary filmmaker. He is the author of Stories Make the World, Reflections on Storytelling and the Art of the Documentary, published by Berghahn Books. The second edition of his book River of Renewal, Myth and History in the Klamath Basin, published in October, 2024 by Oregon State University Press, has new chapters on how the largest dam removal in history came about and on the application of traditional ecological knowledge to restoration of the Klamath watershed.

Documentary films he has scripted include Oil On Ice, which is about the controversy over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; The Greatest Good, a history of the U. S. Forest Service; and A Land Between Rivers, a history of central California. Wonders of Nature, which he wrote for the Great Wonders of the World series, won an Emmy for best special non-fiction program. Promises, to which he contributed as Consulting Writer and Researcher, won Emmys for best documentary and outstanding background analysis and research, and it was an Academy Award nominee for "best documentary." Berkeley in the Sixties, which Most co-wrote, also received that Academy Award nomination. He is the screenwriter for The Bridge So Far: A Suspense Story, which won a best-documentary Emmy. And he is writer/producer of the documentary River of Renewal, which won the "best documentary feature" award at the American Indian Film Festival; Nature's Orchestra, a film about soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause; and Wilder than Wild: Fire, Forests, and the Future.

Most wrote the "Theater of History" for the permanent exhibit of the Washington State History Museum. His play A Free Country, which was produced by the Seattle Group Theatre in 1997, is based on the characters in the museum's Hooverville shack diorama. His other plays include Poe, Medicine Show, Raven's Seed, Watershed, Forces of Nature, and Messenger from Afar. In addition, he has written plays for and with the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the Dell'Arte Players Company.