Yoav Potash is a native-Californian, a dog-person, and either an Aquarius or a Pisces, depending on who you ask. His weather forecast is partially crazy with a chance of brainstorms. Since childhood, Yoav has nourished a passion for stories, words, and images. Dr. Suess lived a few blocks from Yoav’s childhood home in La Jolla, and when Yoav was six years old the author autographed his copy of the classic “Green Eggs and Ham.” Yoav soon wrote “The Three Cool Mice,” a series of illustrated stories featuring tough-talking mice in leather jackets, combining a Suess sensibility with a veneration for The Fonz. Yoav’s father, an Israeli computer engineer, and his mother, an English teacher, took their three cool boys to see countless Broadway musicals at San Diego’s Starlight Bowl Theater, instilling a love of theatrical storytelling. In addition to the music and drama, Yoav was especially fond of the moments when a plane from the nearby airport would fly over the outdoor amphitheater; all the actors would freeze in their places until the noisy plane had passed. This clever and entertaining solution would later inspire Yoav’s creative problem solving during the many technical difficulties of low-budget filmmaking. In high school Yoav painted and sculpted, acted in plays, shot and developed his own photographs, wrote lyrics, sang in a garage band, and worked as a concert promoter. He began college at UC Davis, then transferred to UC Berkeley where he double-majored in English Literature and Socially Sustainable Architecture, while minoring in Creative Writing. Yoav participated in writing workshops with authors Mary Gaitskill, Leonard Michaels, Bharati Mukherjee, Thaisa Frank, Gary Soto, Max Byrd, Thom Gunn, Sandra Gilbert, and others. Yoav received UC Berkeley’s top prize in creative writing, and several short story prizes. After graduating from Berkeley, Yoav dove headfirst into filmmaking by documenting the journey of a group of Berkeley students who helped rebuild burned African-American churches in Alabama. Yoav obtained grants for this first film from The Jewish Federation, The Gerbode Foundation, and KQED. In 1999 and 2000 PBS distributed and broadcast the film, entitled “From The Ground Up.” Since then, Yoav has created a variety of film and video projects, including corporate videos for Apple Computer and Neutrogena, and Yoav's short comedy “Minute Matrimony,” which won a Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival. With a tip of his hat to the rhymes of Dr. Suess, Yoav accepted the award with an improvised rap. Yoav is currently developing feature film projects, as well as returning to writing fiction. Along the way, he produces, edits and directs commercials, corporate videos, and just about anything else that interests him. He lives and works in Berkeley, CA, where he is an active member of the Jewish community.

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