Laura Axelrod is a writer and book reviewer. Her plays have been performed in California, New York and Europe.
Her book reviews appear regularly in the Birmingham News and on the Newhouse News Service wire. Her essay on 9/11 was quoted during a lecture at London’s Bartlett School of Architecture in 2004. Other instructional articles have been used by colleges, high schools and writing groups throughout the country. She was recently quoted by Vanity Fair’s James Wolcott on the death of Norman Mailer.
When she was 22 years old, she graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with an MFA in Dramatic Writing. She also received her BFA in Dramatic Writing, and was awarded the John L. Golden Award for Playwright with Most Potential, and the Rod Marriott Senior Playwriting Award that same year.
During the last half of college, she worked as a stage manager and assistant director for off-Broadway and off-off Broadway shows. She has occasionally acted in films and on stage since she was a teenager.
Her play, "Everybody in This House" was performed several times in California, and also at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. It is available to the public through Original Works.
Other work has been performed at Venue 9 in San Francisco and A Voice of Her Own - the Eureka Women's Theater Festival. In New York, her writing has been seen or heard at Dixon Place, Raw Impressions Musical Theatre, the Collective Unconscious, and Westside Rhyme.
Laura began blogging back in 2002 and was one of the first generation of playwrights to harness the power of the internet. In 2007, Laura switched to blogging about history and books. More information can be found at her blog, Gasp!
Laura spent several years as an activist in the Domestic Violence Movement. She attended the 1992 Democratic Convention, graduated from a seminary and researched post-communist transitions while backpacking alone through Central Europe. Despite having lived in San Francisco, Austin, and New York, she finally chose to settle down in Alabama. But she occasionally misses everywhere else.
