Claim: David Simon is a writer.

David Judah Simon -LRB- born February 9 , 1960 -RRB- is an American author , journalist , writer , and producer . He worked for the Baltimore Sun City Desk for twelve years -LRB- 1982 -- 95 -RRB- and wrote Homicide : A Year on the Killing Streets -LRB- 1991 -RRB- and co-wrote The Corner : A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood -LRB- 1997 -RRB- with Ed Burns . The former book was the basis for the NBC series Homicide : Life on the Street -LRB- 1993 -- 99 -RRB- , on which Simon served as a writer and producer . Simon adapted the latter book into the HBO mini-series The Corner -LRB- 2000 -RRB- .   He was the creator , executive producer , head writer , and show runner for all five seasons of the HBO television series The Wire -LRB- 2002 -- 2008 -RRB- . He adapted the non-fiction book Generation Kill into a television mini-series , and served as the show runner for the project . He was selected as one of the 2010 MacArthur Fellows and named an Utne Reader visionary in 2011 . Simon also created the HBO series Treme with Eric Overmyer , which aired for four seasons . Following Treme , Simon wrote the HBO mini-series Show Me a Hero with journalist William F. Zorzi , a colleague at The Baltimore Sun , and on The Wire .   In August 2015 , HBO commissioned two pilots from Simon 's company Blown Deadline Productions . The first drama , The Deuce , about the New York porn industry in the 1970s and 1980s , would star Maggie Gyllenhaal and co-producer James Franco with shooting in New York in the fall of 2015 . The second drama is an untitled program exploring a `` detailed examination of partisanship '' and money in Washington politics , to be co-produced with Carl Bernstein .