02.12.06: HILARY THAYER HAMANN

Hilary Thayer Hamann attended New York University, where she received her B.A. in Film and Television Production and Dramatic Writing from Tisch School of the Arts, her M.A. in Cinema Studies from the Graduate School of Arts and Science, and a Certificate in Anthropological Filmmaking from NYU¹s Center for Media, Culture, and History. Ms. Hamann is actively involved with her alma mater, and she is the co-founder of the Tisch Alumni Cinema Club, which invites Tisch graduates to attend screenings of current films in the company of teachers, students, and industry professionals. She is currently writing and developing a curriculum for a guide to classic cinema for families. She is the author of Anthropology of an American Girl, a novel, and she is a contributor to and the editorial director of Categories‹On The Beauty of Physics.

She has spoken about writing and the importance of originality in creative expression at colleges in the United States including Boston University, George Mason University, Georgetown, Harvard, Northwestern, University of California-Berkeley, and Barnard College, where she kicked off the spring 2004 Books Etc. reading series with a lecture and a reading from her novel, Anthropology of an American Girl. Books Etc., initiated in the fall of 2003, has featured some of today's most celebrated writers, including Pulitzer Prize-winners Jhumpa Lahiri, Anna Quindlen, and Alice Walker.

Ms. Hamann has worked in New York¹s film, publishing, and entertainment industries since the 1980s. She was a contributing writer for several trade publications, including Variety¹s Video Business. She was the assistant to Jacques d¹Amboise, founder and artistic director of the renowned National Dance Institute, a non-profit founded on the belief that the arts have a unique power to engage children and motivate them toward excellence, where she was responsible for script and project development, and where she produced a short film based on the Gwendolyn Brooks poem, ³We Real Cool² directed by Academy Award-winning director Emile Ardolino (1989). While at NDI, Ms. Hamann helped to coordinate an international exchange with students from America and the then Soviet Union based upon literature, music, and art. Recently, she acted as a judge for both the Telluride IndieFest, 2004 and the Brooklyn International Film Festival, 2004 and 2005; and as a feature documentary judge for the Brooklyn Arts Council, 2005. She is a contributor to Film Festival Reporter.

Ms. Hamann is the founder and creative director of Vernacular Press, a creative center in New York City devoted to ideas and possibilities in publishing. She is editor of the Categories series, a collection of educational books using imagery from emerging and well-known artists, and information from a variety of disciplines to facilitate the reader¹s encounter with challenging material. Ms. Hamann moderates a reading series, The Renaissance Society, that focuses on rediscovering classic literary works.

In 2004, Ms. Hamann and her husband withdrew their three children (ages 5, 7, 14) from private school to provide them with a rigorous academic and artistic curriculum. The children are tutored privately in classical music, fine art, language, and humanities. They watch no television; instead, they enjoy the rich cultural life of New York City.

Ms. Hamann is a supporter of National Dance Institute, Friends of African Libraries, the International Slow Food Movement, Women¹s National Book Association, Tisch Alumni Cinema Club, Film Forum, WBAI, WFUV, and WLIU, among other organizations.

Listen to Hilary on The Lit Show (RealMedia Streaming)