Geoffrey Fletcher is a writer-director who won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire. He is an adjunct professor of film at Columbia University and New York University, and attended NYU's Tisch Graduate Film Program. His first short film, "Magic Markers," was honored by the the Director's Guild of America and the Sundance Film Festival, and was made part of NYU's film school curriculum.

Precious is his major screenwriting debut and this is his first Academy Award nomination. It was executive produced by Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, and released in November 2009. Entertainment magazine Variety has also labeled him one of the top 10 screenwriters to watch. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2819316/bio

He is the first African-American to win this award. In his acceptance speech, he is speechless and overwhelmed with emotion at the honor bestowed upon him from the Academy.

Geoffrey Fletcher accepts the 2010 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire.

Geoffrey Fletcher often compares writing the Precious screenplay and his own Hollywood aspirations to the struggle of the main character. It took Fletcher years to break into screenwriting for major motion pictures, even though he started making short films at an early age and apprenticed under Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee.

Precious is based on Push, a novel written by Sapphire in 1996 based on her experiences as a remedial reading teacher in New York. Precious, played by Gabourey Sidibe, is an obese, African American teenager who has been impregnated several times by her father. Locked out of society not only by her size, race and violent family life, she is also illiterate. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120176695 The film is nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Sidibe was nominated for Best Actress and comedian Mo'Nique, who turned on her serious side in the film, won an award for Best Supporting Actress.

In a guest blog for The Huffington Post, Fletcher describes the project as one that "had an uncanny spirit of opportunity in its DNA" and calls main character Precious universal, like Huck Finn, Odysseus and Celie from The Color Purple. The screenplay's epitaph reads "For Precious Girls Everywhere," and the author says women of all ages, shapes and colors have come up to him and told him they are like Precious.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey-fletcher/precious-to-me_b_478921.html

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Fletcher's screenplay has won two additional awards: the first, a Satellite Award, in 2009 for Best Adapted Screenplay and the second, a Black Reel Award, in 2010 in the same category. His screenwriting work on Precious has been nominated for eight additional awards including BAFTA's award for Best Adapted Screenplay, an Image Award for Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture and an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2819316/awards