Joanne Koch is an author, playwright, screenwriter and teacher of writing. She has had 16 playsÑdramas and musicalsÑproduced around the country. Stardust recently won the national Nantucket Short Play Competition. Soul Sisters, a multicultural musical written with Sarah Cohen, has toured to 29 universities throughout the country and was published in the anthology Shared Stages by State University of New York Press. Courage like a wild horse, presented recently at the Victory Gardens Reader's Theater, at the American Indian Center and at the Chicago Writers' Bloc New Play Festival, is an adaptation of Native American artist Okee Chee's book of the same name. Safe Harbor, a true World War II story of anti-Nazi resistance and rescue featuring Greek and Latino music, premiered at the Organic Theater in Chicago, was produced in Los Angeles and has since toured to many schools and communities. Nesting Dolls, A Leading Woman, Teeth, Haymarket, Sandburg Among the Goats and A Silver Dish, adapted from Saul Bellow's short story, are among other plays that have garnered awards and grants as well as productions in the Midwest, New York and California. Among her musicals for which she has written the book are American Klezmer, produced in Los Angeles; Hearts in the Wood, winner of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship; Sophie, Totie & Belle (with Sarah Cohen), produced off-Broadway and throughout the East Coast; Belle Barth: If I Embarrass You, Tell Your Friends; and Danny Kaye: Supreme Court Jester (with Sarah Cohen), which has toured in the Midwest and New York. Koch wrote the television series High Top Tower which won an Emmy Award and the American Film and Video Award for Best Children's Television Series. She's written several teleplays including Abigail & Brewster; The Thirty-six; Flying Feathers; Today I am a Person, nominated for an Emmy Award and winner of the National Angel Award; the TV docudramas Baby you're okay, on teen pregnancy, which won an Excalibur Award, and The Price of Daffodils, about domestic violence, broadcast on cable and used in shelters around the country. Dr. Koch is the director of the Master of Science in Written Communication program and professor of English at National-Louis University in Chicago. She is director of the Chicago Writers' Bloc new play development group supported in part by The Dramatists Guild Fund, Inc. She was featured on the cover of Today's Chicago Woman as one of 100 women in Chicago making a difference through her writing and teaching.
