OFFICER CANDIDATES 

For Secretary: Theresa Rebeck
Playwright, Screenwriter, and Writer

Theresa Rebeck is a widely produced playwright throughout the United States and abroad. New York productions of her work include Dead Accounts, Seminar, Mauritius, The Scene, The Water’s Edge, Loose Knit, The Family of Mann and Spike Heels, Bad Dates, The Butterfly Collection, and Our House, The Understudy, and View of the Dome. Omnium Gatherum (co-written, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2003) was featured at the Humana Festival. Poor Behavior premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 2011.

All of Ms. Rebeck’s past produced plays are published as Theresa Rebeck: Complete Plays, Volumes I, II III, and IV and in acting editions. Ms. Rebeck’s other publications are Free Fire Zone, a book of comedic essays about writing and show business. She has written for American Theatre Magazine and has had excerpts of her plays published in the Harvard Review. Ms. Rebeck has written three novels: Three Girls and Their Brother, Twelve Rooms with a View, and her latest novel I’m Glad About You which will be published this spring.

In television, Ms. Rebeck has written for Dream On, Brooklyn Bridge, L.A. Law, American Dreamer, Maximum Bob, First Wave, and Third Watch. She was the creator of the NBC drama Smash.  She has been a writer/producer for Canterbury’s Law, Smith, Law and Order: Criminal Intent and NYPD Blue. Her produced feature films include Harriet the Spy, Gossip, and the independent features Sunday on the Rocks and Seducing Charlie Barker. Awards include the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, the Writer’s Guild of America award for Episodic Drama, the Hispanic Images Imagen Award, and the Peabody. She has won the National Theatre Conference Award (for The Family of Mann), and was awarded the William Inge New Voices Playwriting Award in 2003 for The Bells. Mauritius received the 2007 IRNE Award for Best New Play as well as the Eliot Norton Award.  Other awards include the PEN/Laura Pels Foundation Award, the Athena Film Festival Award, an Alex Award, a Lilly Award, and in 2011 she was named one of the 150 Fearless Women in the World by Newsweek.

Ms. Rebeck holds an MFA in Playwriting and a PhD. in Victorian Melodrama, both from Brandeis University. She is a board member of the Dramatists Guild, a Contributing Editor to the Harvard Review, an Associate Artist of the Roundabout Theatre Company, a Playwright Adviser and Board Member of the LARK, and has taught at Brandeis University and Columbia University.  She is currently teaching at the University of Houston.

TERM TRUSTEE CANDIDATES FOR ELECTION TO SECOND THREE-YEAR TERM

Jennifer Egan
Writer

Jennifer Egan was born in Chicago and raised in San Francisco. She is the author of The Invisible Circus, a novel which became a feature film starring Cameron Diaz in 2001; Look at Me, a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction in 2001; Emerald City and Other Stories; and The Keep, which was a national bestseller. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, McSweeney’s and other magazines. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. Her non-fiction articles have appeared frequently in the New York Times Magazine, and her 2002 cover story on homeless children received the Carroll Kowal Journalism Award. Another article, “The Bipolar Kid,” received a 2009 NAMI Outstanding Media Award for Science and Health Reporting from the National Alliance on Mental Illness.  Her most recent novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the LA Times Book Prize.

Nathan Englander
Writer

Nathan Englander is the author of the internationally bestselling story collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, the novel The Ministry of Special Cases, and the collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank (all published by Knopf/Vintage). He was the 2012 recipient of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for What We Talk About. His short fiction has been widely anthologized, most recently in 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories. Translated into twenty languages, Englander was selected as one of “20 Writers for the 21st Century” by The New Yorker, received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a PEN/Malamud Award, the Bard Fiction Prize, and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. He’s been a fellow at the Dorothy & Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and at The American Academy of Berlin. In 2012, along with the publication of his new collection, Englander’s play The Twenty-Seventh Man premiered at The Public Theater, and his translation New American Haggadah (edited by Jonathan Safran Foer) was published by Little Brown. He also co-translated Etgar Keret’s Suddenly A Knock at the Door, published by FSG. He is currently Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at New York University and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Erroll McDonald
Editor

Erroll McDonald is Vice President, Executive Editor in the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group of Penguin Random House.

Among the authors he has edited and published are: James Baldwin, Count Basie, Romare Bearden, Chico Buarque, Italo Calvino, Stanley Crouch, Friedrich Durenmatt, Marjorie Garber, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Michael R. Gordon, Alan Hollinghurst, Simon Johnson, Kazuo Ishiguro, Margo Jefferson, Randall Kennedy, Klaus Kinski, Fran Lebowitz, Arthur Levitt, David Malouf, Wangari Maathai, Timothy Mo, Toni Morrison, Albert Murray, Bao Nihn, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Juan Carlos Onetti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Richard Posner, V.S. Pritchett, Richard Pryor, Manuel Puig, Salman Rushdie, Luc Sante, Nicolas Sarkozy, Helmut Schmidt, Adhaf Souief, Wole Soyinka, Robert Farris Thompson, and John Edgar Wideman

Of Caribbean heritage, Erroll McDonald was born in Limon, Costa Rica. After attending the Bronx High School of Science—where he received the school’s first Martin Luther King, Jr. Award for Scholarship and Citizenship—he graduated from Yale College summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English with Honors, and membership in Phi Beta Kappa. He was for two years a Fellow in the Department of Comparative Literature of the Yale Graduate School. He holds an Executive Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. He is a former trustee of the Brearley School and member of the Century Association.  He has been a lecturer at Yale College and an adjunct professor at Columbia. He lives in New York City and Goshen, Connecticut. 

Andrew Solomon
Writer and Activist

Andrew Solomon is a writer and lecturer on politics, culture, and psychology; a professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University Medical Center; and the president of PEN American Center. His most recent book, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, received the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction as well as more than twenty-five other national awards.  His previous book, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, recently revised and reissued, won the National Book Award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist; it has been published in twenty-four languages. He is also the author of The Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time of Glasnost, and of a novel, A Stone Boat.  An anthology of his international reporting, Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change, Seven Continents, Twenty-Five Years, will be published in April, 2016.  His writing appears frequently in The New Yorker and in The New York Times, and he is often on NPR.  His TED talks have been viewed over ten million times. Solomon is an activist in LGBT rights, mental health, education, and the arts.  He is founder of the Solomon Research Fellowships in LGBT Studies at Yale University, and a member of the boards of directors of the National LGBTQ Force and Trans Youth Family Allies.  Additionally, Solomon serves on the boards of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the World Monuments Fund; Yaddo; and The Alex Fund. He lives in New York and London with his husband and son; he also has a daughter with a college friend.  

TERM TRUSTEE CANDIDATES FOR ELECTION TO FIRST THREE-YEAR TERM 

Ayad Akhtar
Writer, Playwright, and Screenwriter

Ayad Akhtar was born in New York City and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is the author of the novel, American Dervish, translated into 20 languages worldwide. He is also a playwright and screenwriter. His play Disgraced premiered in New York at Lincoln Center Theater in 2012, won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and premiered on Broadway in 2014. His latest plays, The Who & The What (Lincoln Center Theatre) and The Invisible Hand (New York Theater Workshop) made their New York premieres in 2014 as well. As a screenwriter, he has been nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. He has been the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Djerassi, the Sundance Institute, Ucross, and Yaddo, where he currently serves as a Board Director. He was the author for a PEN President’s Circle Author’s Evening in the Fall 2014.

Gabriella De Ferrari
Art Historian and Writer

Art historian, curator, and writer Gabriella De Ferrari has lived and worked in Boston, Massachusetts and New York City. Born in Tacna, Peru to Italian parents, Gabriella De Ferrari has held administrative and curatorial positions at major museums and art organizations. At the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, she was curator of exhibitions before becoming the Director of the Institute in 1975. Gabriella De Ferrari was Assistant Director of Curatorial Affairs and Programs at the Fogg Museum and the Busch-Reisinger Museum. Her novel, A Cloud on Sand received a Barnes and Noble Discover Award. Gringa Latina, Gabriella De Ferrari’s memoir about her experience living in two cultures was published in 1994. She is the author of many short stories that have appeared in different publications and will be published as a collection. She has served on the Boards of Trustees and on the advisory committees of many leading institutions, including Colby College, City University Graduate Center Foundation, Harvard University Museum, the New School, and the Wadsworth Atheneum. She was the philanthropic advisor to the chairman and CEO of United Technologies Corporation. Gabriella De Ferrari was awarded the New School Medal for Distinguished Service, and has received an Honorary Doctorate in Letters from Colby College.

Elizabeth Hemmerdinger
Playwright, Screenwriter, and Film Producer

Elizabeth Hemmerdinger is a playwright, screenwriter, and film producer.  She is the Producer of Dance With Me, an independent documentary in post-production which tells the universal story of children who want to be accepted for who they are. She is also the librettist of We Can Do It, a musical in development with Anton Dudley (lyrics) and Robert Cioffi (music), in which a girl who thinks herself ordinary becomes Rosie the Riveter. Her published plays include Squall, Rug Rage, Road Rage, Pissed Sister, and The Pier Group (Publisher: Playscripts, Inc., NYC). 

Hemmerdinger is the Producer and Writer of The Girl with the Rivet Gun, a cutting-edge, animated, interactive, new-media project in development with award-winning filmmakers Anne de Mare and Kirsten Kelly.  She is the Producer of ELAINE STRITCH: SHOOT ME, with Isotope Films, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was named one of the 5 most essential documentaries of 2013.  Hemmerdinger is an Associate Producer of The Homestretch, which premiered in 2014 at Hot Docs in Toronto, AFI in Washington D.C., and Human Rights Watch Festival at Lincoln Center PBS in 2015.

Hemmerdinger is the Producer and Writer of Good Sister which opened the SoHo International Film Festival in 2014; was the official selection of the Boston International FF, NY Filmmakers, and Queens World Film Festival; and won the award of excellence from BEST SHORTS and the award for Best Screenplay at the Culver City Film Festival. She is an Executive Producer of Lost And Sound, a British documentary following 3 artists who re-discover music after deafness.  The documentary played at SXSW and Film Society Lincoln Center in 2013, and was a 2014 Reel Abilities selection.

Hemmerdinger is the Executive Producer of The Real Rosie The Riveter Project, a collection of filmed oral histories housed at NYU’s Tamiment Labor Archive/Bobst Libraries of the women who took the place of men on the production line during World War II, and the Producer of Beyond These Walls, an independent film that follows the 2012 return of Baroness Mariuccia Zerilli-Marimò to Milan, where she revisits her childhood experiences in war-torn Italy. 

Hemmerdinger was Visiting Artist at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and is Visiting Scholar at the Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island.  She has organized and participated in conferences on documentary film-making in the Villa La Pietra Dialogues at the prestigious NYU campus in Florence, Italy in 2014, 2015, returning 2016.  Hemmerdinger has written for Ms. Magazine; is among the founders of the Board of Directors of Women’s Voices for Change, and a contributor to its website.  She is also a Board Member of Hunter College Foundation.

Sean Kelly
Gallery Owner

Born in England, Sean Kelly, founder of the Sean Kelly Gallery, was trained as an artist and subsequently became a curator at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery and Museum, Swansea, Wales. He went on to become the Director of Visual Arts for the Bath International Arts Festival, Bath, England and founded and directed Artsite, a site-specific exhibition program, before moving to New York in 1989. He founded the gallery in 1991, working privately representing artists such as Marina Abramović, Ann Hamilton, Rebecca Horn and Julião Sarmento. He quickly developed a reputation for his commitment to artists whose work is ambitious, challenging, intellectual and unconventional. In a New York career that has spanned over two decades, Sean Kelly has become a symbol for high quality, challenging contemporary art, mounting hundreds of solo and group exhibitions that have included the work of many of the most significant artists of our time. The gallery, currently one of the most prominent in the world, occupies 22,000 square feet of space designed by award winning architect Toshiko Mori in the Hudson Yards neighborhood. It represents some of the world’s most influential artists such as Marina Abramović, Rebecca Horn, Joseph Kosuth, Antony Gormley, and the Estate of Robert Mapplethorpe. The gallery’s artists have participated in major exhibitions at internationally renowned institutions including the MoMA, The Tate Museum, The Centre Pompidou, The Walker Art Institute, The Hirshhorn and numerous Venice Biennales. Sean currently serves on the Arts Advisory Board for the Arts Arena at the American University of Paris, Selection Committee for the Armory Show art fair, and The Hudson Yard’s Hells Kitchen Alliance Board.

Yvonne Marsh
Private Investor

Yvonne Marsh, a private investor, has spent her career in private equity, corporate finance, restructuring and mergers and acquisitions.  She has completed over 60 transactions and served on over 20 for profit and not-for-profit Boards.  She has been a partner at Liberty Partners and Joseph, Littlejohn and Levy, a Managing Director at Chase Manhattan and an investment banker at Drexel Burnham Lambert and Merrill Lynch. Ms. Marsh graduated with Honors from Williams College and Harvard Business School. Ms. Marsh has been a PEN President’s Circle Member since 2014 and a PEN Authors’ Evening supporter beginning in 2007.  She currently serves on the Board of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Fay School, Stratton Mountain Watch Homeowners Association and National School Climate Center.

Alexandra Munroe
Art Curator

Alexandra Munroe, Ph.D., is Samsung Senior Curator, Asian Art, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. A pioneering authority on modern and contemporary Asian art and transnational art studies, she has led the Guggenheim’s Asian Art Initiative since its founding in 2006 while also working on the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museum and the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative. She convenes the museum’s biannual Asian Art Council, a curatorial think tank, and heads The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation initiative in contemporary Chinese art.

Munroe has organized the award-winning and critically acclaimed Guggenheim exhibitions Gutai: Splendid Playground (2013, co-organized with Ming Tiampo), Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity (2011), The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989 (2009), and Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe (2008). Other exhibitions and publications include Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective (1989), The Art of Mu Xin (2002), YES YOKO ONO (2000), Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture (2005), organized with Takashi Murakami. Her groundbreaking survey and textbook Japanese Art after 1945: Scream Against the Sky (1994) is recognized for initiating the field of postwar Japanese art history in the United States. Her exhibitions and scholarly catalogues have received top awards and recognition from the Association of American Art Museums, International Art Critics Association, College Art Association, Association of American Museum Curators, Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA), and China Art Powers. In 2008, The Third Mind received the Chairman’s Special Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Raised in Japan, Munroe is former Vice President of Japan Society, New York, and former director of its museum. She holds a BA from Sophia University, Tokyo, an MA from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and a Ph.D. in History from New York University, where her research was in modern East Asian intellectual history. She serves on the advisory boards of Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong; Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; and UCCA, Beijing. She is a trustee of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and the United States-Japan Foundation, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, New York.

Colm Tóibín
Writer

Colm Tóibín was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford in 1955. He studied at University College Dublin and lived in Barcelona between 1975 and 1978. Out of his experience in Barcelona be produced two books, the novel The South and Homage to Barcelona, both published in 1990. When he returned to Ireland in 1978 he worked as a journalist for In Dublin, becoming editor of Magill, Ireland’s current affairs magazine, in 1982. Some of his  work as a journalist and travel writer are included in Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border (1987) and The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe (1994).

His novels are: The Heather Blazing (1992); The Story of the Night (1996); The Blackwater Lightship (1999); The Master (2004); Brooklyn (2009); The Testament of Mary (2012) and Nora Webster (2014). His short story collections are Mothers and Sons (2006) and The Empty Family (2010). His play ‘Beauty in a Broken Place’ was performed at the Peacock Theatre in Dublin in 2004. His other books include: Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush (2002); Love in a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodovar (2002) and All a Novelist Needs: Essays on Henry James (2010). He has edited The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. He is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and a contributing editor at The London Review of Books. Between 2006 and 2013 he was a member of the Arts Council in Ireland. He has taught at Stanford, the University of Texas at Austin and Princeton. He is currently Mellon Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. His second collection of stories The Empty Family, published in 2010, was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Prize. His collection of essays on Henry James, All a Novelist Needs, appeared also in 2010.  In April 2013 The Testament of Mary opened on Broadway with Fiona Shaw, directed by Deborah Warner and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play. The production transferred to the Barbican in London in May 2014. In 2013 it was released as an audio book with Meryl Streep. Colm Toibin’s On Elizabeth Bishop appeared from Princeton University Press in April 2015. He is President of Listowel Writers Week and chair of PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature in New York.

I. SLATE OF CANDIDATES OFFERED BY NOMINATION COMMITTEE

II. BIOGRAPHIES OF CANDIDATES TO BE ELECTED OR REELECTED TO THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES

III. ROSTER OF CURRENT TRUSTEES

IV. PROCEDURE FOR ELECTIONS

V. SUBMISSION OF AN ALTERNATE SLATE