Marsha Norman won a Pulitzer Prize for her play, 'night, Mother, and has been co-chair, with Chris Durang, of the Playwriting Program at The Juilliard School for 20 years. She also won a Tony Award for the book and lyrics of The Secret Garden, and has written books for two other Broadway musicals, The Color Purple, for which she won a Tony nomination, and The Bridges of Madison County, for which she won a Drama Desk nom. She was Vice President of The Dramatists Guild of America for ten years, and is a founder and current President of The Lilly Awards Foundation, a 501c3 corporation that promotes gender parity in theater productions across America, and celebrates the work of women in the theater. Her newest projects include the book for the musical King Kong, and a play commissioned by the UN about trafficking and violence toward women worldwide.
Her first play, Getting Out, received the John Gassner Playwriting Medallion, the Newsday Oppenheimer Award, and a citation from the American Critics Association. Other plays include The Laundromat, The Pool Hall, Loving Daniel Boone, Trudy Blue, and Last Dance. Published collections of her works include Four Plays, Collected Works of Marsha Norman, Vol. 1, and a novel, The Fortune Teller. Her website is www.marshanorman.com, which contains many of her lectures and interviews.
Her television and film credits include 'NIGHT, MOTHER, starring Sissy Spacek and Anne Bancroft; THE LAUNDROMAT, starring Carol Burnett and Amy Madigan; THE POOL HALL, starring James Earl Jones; FACE OF A STRANGER, starring Gena Rowlands and Tyne Daley; COOLER CLIMATE, starring Sally Field and Judy Davis; AUDREY HEPBURN, CUSTODY OF THE HEART, and SAMANTHA, AN AMERICAN GIRL, starring Mia Farrow. She spent one year as Co-Executive Producer of LAW AND ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT, and in 2009, wrote the Gina episodes of Season 2 of HBO's IN TREATMENT, which won a PEABODY award.
She has won Grammy and Emmy nominations, as well as grants and awards from, among others, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. She has won the Margo Jones Award, the Sidney Kingsley Award, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Guild Hall Academy of Arts and Letters. In the spring of 2011, she received the William Inge Lifetime Achievement Award in Playwriting.
She writes and lectures frequently on playwriting and the musical book, and has 18 honorary degrees from American colleges and universities. She was elected to membership in the Fellowship of Southern Writers, serves on the Governing Board of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and is a friend of the Advisory Board of Samuel French. Ms. Norman was elected to the Agnes Scott College Board of Trustees in 2003. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the Martin Segal Center in NYC and the League of New York Professional Theater Women.
She is a native of Kentucky and now lives in New York City.
Marsha Norman