Melanie Marnich

Melanie Marnich is an American playwright and television writer best known for her work on the HBO drama Big Love which earned her a Writers Guild of America (WGA) Award nomination in 2010. Marnich also frequently writes plays for American regional theatres and is married to the American playwright Lee Blessing.

Biography

Marnich has been a resident playwright at New Dramatists in New York City since 2005. Her most recent plays include Quake, Blur, Tallgrass Gothic, Calling All, Beautiful Again, These Shining Lives, and The Storm Coming. Blur received its world premiere Off Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club and also won the Francesca Primus Prize from Denver Center Theatre. Quake and Tallgrass Gothic premiered at the Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival of New American Plays.

Her play, A Sleeping Country, which premiered at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park was awarded the Mickey Kaplan New American Play Prize. She also received the Carbonell Award for Best New Work of the Year play in 2007 for her play, Cradle of Man.

Marnich's adaptation of Katie Couric’s book, The Brand New Kid, premiered at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in November 2006. Her awards include, two McKnight Advancement Grants and two Jerome Fellowships from The Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, the Samuel Goldwyn Award, an Ohio Arts Council Grant, the Otis Guernsey New Voices Playwriting Award and the Melvoin Award from Northlight Theatre (Chicago).

Her plays have been produced or developed at New York’s Public Theater, London’s Royal Court Theatre, Guthrie Theater, Arena Stage, Portland Center Stage, The Actors Studio, Geva Theatre, Hyde Park Theatre, American Theater Company, HERE and Denver Center for the Performing Arts. She has received commissions from the Kennedy Center, Guthrie Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, Arena Stage and South Coast Repertory.

Marnich joined the crew of HBO drama Big Love as a staff writer for the third season in 2009. She wrote the episode "Come, Ye Saints". Marnich was nominated for the Writers Guild of America (WGA) Award for episodic drama at the February 2010 ceremony for the episode.^[1] She was promoted to story editor for the fourth season in 2010 and wrote the episode "The Mighty and Strong". She wrote for three seasons of "The Big C" for Showtime; for the AMC drama, "Low Winter Sun;" and most recently served as a co-executive producer and writer for "The Affair" on Showtime.

External links

Melanie Marnich at the Internet Movie Database

References