Amanda Vaill
the author of Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins, for which she received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the bestselling Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy – A Lost Generation Love Story, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award in biography. In addition she is a co-author of Seaman Schepps: A Century of New York Jewelry Design, an illustrated study of the work of her designer grandfather, and has edited or contributed to a number of other books, most recently Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy, the catalogue for the award-winning museum exhibition of the same name. Her screenplay for the Emmy-Award-winning PBS/American Masters documentary, Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About, was also nominated for the award (and earned another nomination for its narrator, Ron Rifkin. Her next project is a work of narrative historical nonfiction, Hotel Florida: Love and Death in Spain, 1936-1939.
Amanda was educated at Harvard University and spent a number of years in book publishing before becoming a full-time writer in 1992. Her journalism and criticism have appeared in such publications as ArtNews, Ballet Review, Esquire, New York Magazine, Town & Country, The Washington Post, and Architectural Digest, where she is a Contributing Writer. She lives in New York City.
News, Events, Appearances, Etc.:
(click on the underlined links for more information)
NEWS FLASH!: “Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About” wins a 2010 George Foster Peabody Award for outstanding achievement in electronic media.
RECENT:
PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, “Javier Cercas in Conversation with Amanda Vaill”; Saturday, May 1, 4:30-5:30 pm, Instituto Cervantes, 211-215 East 49th Street, New York, NY
Leon Levy Center for Biography (CUNY): Panel discussion, “Biography and the Non-verbal,” part of the second annual Conference on Biography, March 19, 2010
Dallas Museum of Art: slide lecture, “A Perfect Relationship: Art and the Theater of Jerome Robbins,” and Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About, screening/discussion; October 16, 2009.
Williams College:(Williamstown, MA): Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About, screening/discussion, Images Cinema, October 18, 2009; New York City Ballet performance of Dances at a Gathering, ’62 Center for Theater and Dance, October 19, 2009.
David Patrick Columbia’s New York Social Diary, August 12, 2009: “My candidate for a biography of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis would be Amanda Vaill.” Thanks, David!
2009 Primetime Emmy Awards: Nominee,Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming for Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About
Dance Camera West: Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About screening/discussion, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, June 13, 2009
Museum of Performance and Design/Words On Dance: Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About, screening/discussion; Letterman Digital Arts Center Premiere Theater, San Francisco, February 5, 2009
Dance On Camera 2009 -- Film Society of Lincoln Center: Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About, screening/discussion; January 16, 2009
City Center Theatre: "Encores!" On the Town seminar, November 18, 2008
Paley Center for Media: Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About, screening/discussion; October 23, 2008
Dallas Museum of Art: Slide lecture,“‘The Great Fair,’ Gerald and Sara Murphy in Paris, 1921-1929”; July 24, 2008
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts: Lectures and panel discussions about Jerome Robbins, February 1 and 4, and October 11, 2007; June 16, 2008
New York City Ballet Guild Seminar, New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, May 5, 2008
Carol Klein Memorial Lecture, National Arts Club (New York, NY), April 22, 2008
Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque Memorial Symposium, Yale University (New Haven, CT), April 11, 2008
Montclair (NJ) State University, “American Spring” Arts Festival: “Fancy Free and American Modernism”; April 2 & 3, 2008
Words on Dance (San Francisco, CA): panel moderator: “The Art of Jerome Robbins -- Broadway” and “The Art of Jerome Robbins -- Ballet”; March 10 and March 17, 2008
“Works and Process,” Guggenheim Museum (New York, NY), panel moderator: “Filming Jerome Robbins’s N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz”; January 20 and 21, 2008
“A Place for Style in Everything: An ‘Un-Symposium,’” Williams College Museum of Art (Williamstown, MA),September 15, 2008
And more....
is a biographer, journalist, and screenwriter:
To inquire about publishing or film rights, contact Eric Simonoff at ESimonoff@wmeentertainment.com
Contact Amanda at author@amandavaill.com
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Click to find out what Amanda is reading:
