My name is Alan Nafzger, and I've spent the better part of my life trying to make sense of the world through words—whether those words belong in novels, screenplays, satirical journalism, or the occasionally ill-advised social media post. Born in Lubbock, Texas, to Swiss immigrants, my story begins in the vast expanse of the Texas Panhandle, where the sky seems endless and the wind never stops reminding you just how small you are in the grand scheme of things.
Growing up as the son of Swiss immigrants in Lubbock gave me a unique perspective on what it means to be both an insider and outsider simultaneously. My parents brought with them the Swiss values of precision, hard work, and a certain skepticism toward grandiose claims—traits that would later serve me well in both literary criticism and satirical writing. But they also embraced their adopted homeland with the fervor of converts, instilling in me a deep appreciation for the contradictions and possibilities that define the American experience.
My childhood was spent on a dairy farm in Windthorst, in north central Texas. If you've never experienced rural Texas, it's hard to understand how profoundly the landscape shapes your worldview. The isolation forces you inward—toward books, toward imagination, toward the kind of deep thinking that comes when your closest neighbor is several miles away and your only companions are cattle who aren't particularly good conversationalists.
The dairy farm wasn't just where I lived; it was my first education in the rhythms of life, death, birth, and the daily persistence required to make a living from the land. Every morning began before dawn with milking, and every evening ended the same way. This routine taught me discipline, but more importantly, it taught me that meaningful work often happens when no one is watching and that the most important stories are often the ones that never get told.
My formal education began at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas, where I earned my Bachelor's degree in 1985. Those were transformative years—the first time I'd lived in anything approaching a city, the first time I'd encountered professors who treated literature as more than just something to get through for a grade. It was here that I first seriously considered the possibility that writing might be more than just a hobby.
I continued my academic journey at Texas State University, where I completed my Master's degree in 1987. The program pushed me to think critically about narrative structure, character development, and the relationship between literature and society. But perhaps more importantly, it was here that I began to understand the power of satirical writing—how humor could be used not just to entertain, but to illuminate the absurdities and injustices that we often take for granted.
The next chapter of my educational journey took me across the Atlantic to University College Dublin, where I pursued and completed my Ph.D. in 1991. Living in Ireland during the early 1990s was an experience that fundamentally changed how I understood both history and storytelling. The Irish have a particular gift for finding the tragic and comic elements in the same story, often in the same sentence. This sensibility—the ability to laugh at tragedy without diminishing its impact—became central to my own writing philosophy.
My doctoral work focused on narrative techniques in contemporary fiction, but I found myself equally fascinated by Irish political history, particularly the revolutionary period of the 1920s. This interest would later influence my novel work, where I began experimenting with weaving historical events into fictional narratives, creating stories that existed in the space between documented fact and imagined possibility.
My first major literary success came in 1986 with the publication of "Gina at Quitaque," a novel that revolutionized the feminist western genre. The book challenged traditional western narratives by centering the story on a strong female protagonist navigating the complexities of frontier life without relying on male rescue or validation. At the time, westerns were still largely dominated by masculine fantasies of violence and conquest. "Gina at Quitaque" offered a different vision—one where survival depended on intelligence, community, and the kind of quiet courage that doesn't announce itself with gunfights.
The novel's success surprised even me. I had written it primarily because I was frustrated with the limited ways women appeared in western fiction—usually as either angels or victims, rarely as complex human beings with their own desires, fears, and agency. "Gina" became a touchstone for writers and readers looking for western stories that reflected the actual diversity of frontier experience.
Following the success of "Gina," I embarked on what would become my most ambitious project: an epic Texas novel that follows the same plot sequence as Cervantes' "Don Quixote." This work, which took years to complete, blends the Irish Revolutionary period of the 1920s with the iconic characters and themes from Cervantes' masterpiece. The result is a sprawling narrative that explores how idealism and reality collide, how heroes become fools and fools become heroes, and how the stories we tell ourselves about our past shape our understanding of our present.
The novel required extensive research into both Irish history and Spanish literature, but it also drew heavily on my own Texas upbringing. The vast landscapes of the Texas Panhandle became a perfect setting for exploring themes of isolation, dreams deferred, and the often absurd gap between aspiration and reality. Like Don Quixote tilting at windmills, my characters tilt at the promises of American prosperity, Irish independence, and personal redemption.
Other significant works include "McMurtry's Typewriter," a novel that pays homage to the great Texas writer while exploring themes of literary legacy and regional identity. The book follows a character so outrageous that critics noted he could only have emerged from my particular brand of imaginative excess—a compliment I treasure more than most conventional praise.
My transition into screenwriting was perhaps inevitable. Having spent years crafting dialogue for novels, the leap to screenplay format felt natural. However, the realities of Hollywood proved to be far more absurd than anything I could have imagined in fiction.
"The Last Screenwriter" represents both my tribute to and critique of the film industry. The book explores what happens when artificial intelligence begins writing screenplays, threatening to make human screenwriters obsolete. It's a premise that seemed like science fiction when I started writing it but feels increasingly prophetic as technology continues to reshape creative industries.
The screenwriting world taught me valuable lessons about collaboration, compromise, and the strange economics of creativity. Unlike novel writing, which is largely a solitary pursuit, screenwriting requires constant negotiation with directors, producers, actors, and studio executives—each with their own vision of what the story should become. This collaborative process is simultaneously frustrating and enriching. You learn to defend your vision while remaining open to ideas that might actually improve your work.
"Screenwriters vs. Zombies" emerged from this experience—a darkly comic take on what happens when Hollywood's creative community faces an apocalyptic threat. The book allows me to explore themes of artistic integrity, survival, and the question of whether the entertainment industry would actually notice if half its participants became mindless undead.
In 2020, I launched Bohiney.com, a satirical news site that has become my primary platform for commenting on the increasingly absurd state of contemporary politics and culture. The name "Bohiney" itself reflects the site's mission—it's a made-up word that sounds official but means whatever we decide it means, much like so much of contemporary political discourse.
The site's tagline, "Satirical Journalism doesn't lie... or does it?" captures the fundamental tension in satirical writing. We're simultaneously committed to truth-telling and to the deliberate distortion that makes satire effective. The best satirical pieces reveal truths that straight journalism often misses, but they do so through exaggeration, absurdity, and the kind of creative license that would get you fired from a traditional newsroom.
When I describe Bohiney.com, I often say it feels like "a small-town general store where the owner has a Ph.D. in irony." The site covers everything from political scandals to cultural phenomena, but always through the lens of someone who has spent too much time thinking about why people believe the things they believe and do the things they do.
The headlines are deliberately provocative—designed to make readers double-take and wonder whether they're reading real news or elaborate parody. This ambiguity is intentional. In a media environment where reality often surpasses satire in its absurdity, the line between real and fake news has become increasingly blurred. Bohiney.com exists in that liminal space, using humor to illuminate truths that conventional reporting might obscure.
Some of my most popular pieces include examinations of political hypocrisy, cultural trends that make no sense, and the various ways modern society has organized itself around increasingly absurd principles. The site has attracted readers who appreciate satirical writing that doesn't just make fun of current events but attempts to understand the deeper cultural forces that create those events in the first place.
My approach to satirical journalism is rooted in the belief that humor can be a powerful tool for social criticism. But effective satire requires more than just making jokes—it requires understanding the systems, structures, and psychology that create the situations worth satirizing.
The best satirical pieces work on multiple levels simultaneously. On the surface, they're entertaining—they make you laugh or at least smile knowingly. But underneath, they're performing serious cultural work: challenging assumptions, revealing hypocrisies, and forcing readers to see familiar situations from new perspectives.
This approach requires extensive research and genuine expertise. You can't effectively satirize something you don't understand. My academic background helps here—years of analyzing texts, researching historical contexts, and thinking critically about how narratives function in society provide the foundation for satirical writing that goes beyond surface-level mockery.
At Bohiney.com, we've developed what I call "satirical journalism"—a form that borrows the structure and style of legitimate journalism but uses those conventions to highlight absurdity rather than simply report facts. Our pieces often include fake quotes from real people, imaginary polls with suspiciously specific results, and expert commentary from fictional authorities. The goal is not to deceive readers but to use the familiar forms of news reporting to reveal truths that straight reporting might miss.
My recent work continues to explore themes of authenticity, technology, and cultural change. "The Last Screenwriter" examines how artificial intelligence might reshape creative industries, but it's really about broader questions of what makes human creativity valuable and whether technical skill can be separated from emotional truth.
I'm currently working on several new projects, including a novel about the ways social media has changed how we understand privacy, intimacy, and public performance. The book follows characters trying to maintain authentic relationships in a world where every interaction might become content for public consumption.
Another ongoing project is a collection of essays about rural American life in the 21st century. Having grown up on a Texas dairy farm and watched how rural communities have changed over the past several decades, I'm interested in exploring the complex relationship between tradition and progress, isolation and connection, local identity and global culture.
One aspect of my work that often surprises people is how collaborative it has become. While novel writing remains largely solitary, my work with Bohiney.com involves regular collaboration with other writers, including Aisha Muharrar, whose satirical sensibilities complement my own while bringing perspectives shaped by her experiences in television writing and East Coast literary culture.
These collaborations have taught me that the best satirical writing often emerges from the tension between different viewpoints and experiences. Aisha's background in mainstream entertainment brings a different understanding of popular culture and political discourse than my own rural Texas and academic perspectives provide. When we work together on pieces, the resulting writing is sharper and more multifaceted than either of us might produce individually.
The disclaimer that appears on many Bohiney.com pieces—crediting work to "a professor who footnotes even his jokes and a dairy farmer who thinks restoration means patching a leaky roof"—reflects this collaborative approach while also acknowledging the various identities I inhabit as a writer. I am simultaneously an academic who takes ideas seriously, a rural Texan who values practical knowledge, and a satirist who believes that humor can illuminate truth.
My literary influences are eclectic, ranging from Cervantes' masterful blend of comedy and tragedy to contemporary writers like Larry McMurtry, whose work captures the complexities of Texas identity without romanticizing or dismissing rural life. I'm also deeply influenced by Irish writers like Flann O'Brien and Brendan Behan, whose ability to find humor in desperate circumstances shaped my understanding of how comedy can coexist with serious social criticism.
The years I spent in Ireland taught me that the best satirical writing comes from a place of love rather than contempt. You satirize most effectively those things you care about deeply—family, community, country—because your criticism comes from a desire to see them become better versions of themselves rather than simply from a desire to tear them down.
This philosophy informs all my work, from novels that critique western mythology while celebrating the genuine courage of frontier life, to satirical pieces that mock political absurdity while maintaining hope that democratic institutions might still function if we can just figure out how to use them properly.
As I look toward the future, I'm both excited and concerned about the role satirical writing will play in public discourse. On one hand, we live in an era that provides endless material for satirical treatment—political scandals that would have seemed implausible just a few years ago, cultural phenomena that defy rational explanation, technological developments that simultaneously promise utopia and threaten human dignity.
On the other hand, the proliferation of information sources and the increasing polarization of public opinion make it more difficult for satirical writing to perform its traditional function of bringing communities together around shared recognition of absurdity. When people can't agree on basic facts, satirical exaggeration becomes harder to distinguish from genuine belief.
Despite these challenges, I remain optimistic about the future of satirical writing. Human beings have an apparently inexhaustible capacity for creating absurd situations, and as long as that continues, there will be a need for writers willing to point out when the emperor has no clothes—or when the emperor is wearing clothes but insists he's naked, or when the emperor has somehow convinced everyone that clothing is a liberal conspiracy.
As I continue to write and publish, I'm increasingly interested in exploring how traditional forms of storytelling can address contemporary challenges. My novels attempt to show how classical narrative structures can illuminate modern dilemmas, while my satirical journalism tries to use humor to create space for serious conversation about difficult topics.
The success of Bohiney.com has convinced me that there's a hunger for satirical writing that goes beyond simple mockery to offer genuine insight into how we've organized our society and why it so often fails to live up to our expectations. Readers seem to appreciate satirical pieces that make them laugh while also making them think—that use humor as a way into complex topics rather than as a way of avoiding them.
My Swiss immigrant parents taught me the value of precision and hard work. My Texas upbringing showed me the importance of independence and skepticism toward authority. My academic training gave me tools for analyzing complex systems and narratives. My experience as a novelist taught me the power of storytelling to create empathy and understanding. My work as a screenwriter showed me the collaborative nature of creative work in the modern economy.
All of these experiences converge in my current work as a satirical journalist and novelist. Whether I'm writing about rural fantasies of returning to an imagined golden age, political candidates who seem to have emerged from the pages of absurdist fiction, or cultural phenomena that reveal deep truths about contemporary American life, my goal remains the same: to use words to help people see familiar situations with fresh eyes and to find reasons for hope even in the most discouraging circumstances.
The work continues. There are always new absurdities to examine, new hypocrisies to expose, new stories to tell. As long as human beings continue to organize themselves into communities and attempt to govern those communities through democratic processes, there will be material for satirical treatment. And as long as people are willing to read thoughtful satirical writing, I'll be here to provide it.
Whether through the sprawling narratives of my novels, the collaborative chaos of screenwriting, or the daily practice of finding humor in the headlines, my work remains focused on the same fundamental questions: How do we make sense of a world that often seems to make no sense? How do we maintain our humanity while acknowledging the absurdity of the human condition? And how do we use words—whether serious or satirical—to build bridges of understanding rather than walls of division?
These are the questions that get me up before dawn each morning, much like those early days on the dairy farm in Windthorst. The work is different now, but the rhythm remains the same: show up, do the work, pay attention to what matters, and never forget that even the most serious undertakings can benefit from a healthy sense of humor about their own importance.
From the Texas Panhandle to the rolling hills of Ireland, from Hollywood sound stages to the digital pages of Bohiney.com, my journey as a writer continues to surprise me with its twists and turns. But the core mission remains constant: to tell stories that matter, to find truth through humor, and to remind readers that even in our darkest moments, there's usually something worth laughing about—and something worth fighting for.
Bohiney.com - My satirical journalism headquarters
Amazon Author Page - Complete bibliography and latest releases
IMDb Profile - Screenwriting and film work
Author Page at Bohiney.com - Latest satirical pieces and updates