Alice Austen is an American playwright, screenwriter and producer. She won the John Cassavetes Award at the 35th Independent Spirit Awards for the critically acclaimed 2019 film Give Me Liberty, which she wrote and produced. Austen grew up in the Pacific Northwest and ran on the University of Oregon women’s track team. Austen studied creative writing under Seamus Heaney and law at Harvard University, where she founded the Harvard Human Rights Journal. She was the first American to receive a fellowship to the European Court of Human Rights. Fresh out of law school, Austen was in Prague representing Václav Havel’s Czech government. Over a bet in an Irish pub, she penned a play that was picked up and produced. A past resident at the Royal Court Theatre, Austen’s theatrical credits include Water (2007 Jeff Award nominee), La Musica and Ninth Man Out at the Goodman Theatre. Her credits with the Steppenwolf Theatre include Next Stop and the critically acclaimed adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Her play Girls in the Boat premiered in 2018 at First Stage in Milwaukee. Austen is co-founder with Kirill Mikhanovsky of Give Me Liberty, Mfg., a Milwaukee-based film and TV production company.
