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KALAMAZOO—Julie Jensen, a playwright whose work has been recognized by the Kennedy Center and a long list of other organizations will read from her work next week at É«É«À² Michigan University as part of the Frostic Reading Series at 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 8, in 209-210 Bernhard Center. The reading is free and open to the public.

Julie Jensen

Jensen has received several awards, including the Kennedy Center Award for New American Plays, Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Work and the LA Weekly Award for Best New Play. She also has been awarded a McKnight National Playwriting Fellowship, a Theatre Communications Group/National Endowment for the Arts Playwriting Residency and a major grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

She has won the Mill Mountain Theatre Playwriting Competition three times. Her play, "Two-Headed," was included in the volume "Best Plays by Women." She was twice a finalist for the PEN USA Award in Playwriting, and her play, "Billion Dollar Baby," received the New America Plays Award from the Edgerton Foundation. Her most recent play, "She was My Brother," premiered at Boderlands Theatre in Tucson and was produced at Plan-B Theatre in Salt Lake City.

Jensen's plays also have been produced at a number of prominent theatres across the United States and abroad, including in New York, London, Hamburg and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Her playwriting book, "Playwriting, Brief and Brilliant," provides clear, concise advice for playwrights, condensing the craft down to its essence.

Jensen was reared in southern Utah. She has a doctoral degree in theatre from Wayne State University and has taught playwriting at seven different colleges and universities. She worked as a writer in Hollywood for five years, directed the graduate playwriting program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and is now Resident Playwright at the Salt Lake Acting Company.

For more information, visit wmich.edu/english/events/frostic.html.