Clay Stafford is a bestselling author and filmmaker (producer, director, writer).

His retellings of American children's classics released through Dalmatian Press have sold almost one million hardcover copies.

 His films and literary works have been released in over 14 languages.

Having earned his MFA in creative writing, Clay has been a university professor at the University of Miami and the University of Tennessee, among others, and a keynote speaker for such diverse organizations as the U.S. Department of Defense and Mystery Writers of America.

He has served on the board of MWA along with other nonprofits including Nashville Adult Literacy Council and Watkins College of Art & Design and has been a film advisor to the Tennessee state legislature.

As an academic, he designed the original two-year college film program at Miami-Dade in South Florida.

In 2006, he founded Killer Nashville, an internationally-attended, volunteer-run annual conference, celebrating crime, mystery and suspense literature.

As a film development and production executive, he has worked at Universal Studios, PBS, and now at American Blackguard Entertainment where he has been responsible for greenlighting numerous national and international projects and, through these associations, has had the privilege of working on such productions as Miami Vice, MacGyver, Murder She Wrote, Legal Eagles, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Magnum PI, and Amazing Stories, among many others.

He began his career as a child actor of stage and screen where he often played characters who weren't all they appeared to be, including gigs on Days of Our Lives and Clue: Movies, Murder and Mystery with Martin Mull.

Having previously lived in all corners of the U.S. and having traveled extensively in between with his work, he now resides peacefully and content in Franklin, Tennessee, just outside of Nashville, where he writes and creates literature and film projects through American Blackguard and produced out of Middle Tennessee.