J. Wynn Rousuck: PLEASE WRITE (In Conversation With Tom Hall)

About the Panelists:

• J. Wynn Rousuck, J. Wynn Rousuck is the former longtime theater critic for The Baltimore Sun and current critic for WYPR, Baltimore’s NPR affiliate.
  
  Among the highlights of her years (1974-2007) at The Baltimore Sun was her extensive series on the making of the Broadway musical Hairspray. Her interviews have been published in Hairspray: The Roots (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003) and Conversations with Neil Simon (University Press of Mississippi, 2019).
  
  Other non-fiction has appeared in magazines ranging from Dog World to American Theatre.
  
  Her short stories have been honored by Creative Loafing of Tampa’s Fiction Contest (2013 and 2017) and Atticus Review’s “From Here” competition (2014).
  
  She has taught writing and theater at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Critics Institute, Goucher College, and in various programs at Johns Hopkins University. In addition to WYPR, her broadcast experience includes a year on Maryland Public Television.
  
  She graduated summa cum laude from Wellesley College with honors for a novel written as her senior thesis. In 2007-2008, she was a visiting student in Paula Vogel’s graduate playwriting program at Brown University, where she wrote a number of plays and adaptations.
  
  Please Write is part of her family heritage: Her father was a dog judge and his oldest brother wrote the first book about Boston Terriers, a breed that figures prominently in this novel.
  
  She lives in Baltimore with her husband Alan Fink and their Boston Terrier, Juno.

• Tom Hall, Tom Hall is the host of Midday, the highly rated news and public policy program that features interviews with elected officials, community leaders, as well as thought provoking authors, artists, researchers, journalists, and scholars from around the world.
  
  Tom is also the Host of What Are You Reading? on WYPR. He has also hosted the Maryland Morning Screen Test, and the WYPR/MD Film Festival Spotlight Series. In 2006, as the Music Director of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society, Tom received an Emmy Award for Christmas with Choral Arts, a special that aired on WMAR television, the ABC affiliate in Maryland, for 21 years. He has been a guest co-host of Maryland Public Television’s Art Works, and in 2007, he was named “Best New Broadcast Journalist” by the Maryland Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. In 2009, the Baltimore City Paper named him "Best Local Radio Personality." In 2016, 2017 and 2019 he was recognized as "Best Talk Show Host" in the Baltimore Magazine Reader’s Poll.
  
  Tom Hall lives in Baltimore, with his wife, Linell Smith. Their daughter, Miranda, is a playwright. @tomhallWYPR