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From Mirette to Einstein
Free: Reservations requestedChildren’s book author/illustrator Emily Arnold McCully and playwright Elizabeth Diggs have lived and worked in Spencertown for more than 40 years. They will discuss McCully’s 60 year career, her Caldecott Medal for Mirette on the High Wire, mission to tell stories with wit and flair about brave girls and extraordinary but overlooked women in science, the arts, politics and sports, and more.
McCully’s new picture book, The Eclipse of 1919: How Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity Changed Our World, is the suspenseful story of the most momentous scientific experiment ever conducted. The book will be available for purchase and signing at the Academy.
Emily’s daredevil childhood informs all of her books, from early readers starring enterprising animals, to Young Adult biographies that humanize their subjects and illuminate their historical moments, 2 adult novels, an O’Henry Collection short story. She is working on a family memoir.
Emily is especially proud to have performed in three Off-Broadway productions of Diggs plays and a reading of Grant and Twain at The Spencertown Academy.
Elizabeth Diggs is a playwright whose plays include CLOSE TIES, GOODBYE FREDDY, AMERICAN BEEF, NIGHTINGALE, DUMPING GROUND, HOW TO PLANT A ROSE, and GRANT & TWAIN, produced at theatres nationwide and in England and Europe. In New York, they have been produced at the Vineyard and Ensemble Studio Theatre, where she has developed her work for her entire career.
Liz is a graduate of Brown (B.A.) and Columbia (M.A. Ph.D.) and was a professor in the Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. In musical theatre, she collaborated with Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt on MIRETTE, based on Emily Arnold McCully’s Caldecott-award book. The creative team was invited twice to develop the work at the Sundance Playwrights Lab, and it was then produced in the Sundance theatre. It premiered at Goodspeed, and recently reopened the theatre season after the pandemic at Music Theater Wichita.
For television, Liz wrote for the hospital drama, St. Elsewhere. Honors include a Guggenheim Playwriting Grant, NEA development grant (Louisville), CBS/Kennedy Center Grant for new American plays, the Edgerton Foundation Grant for new work (GRANT & TWAIN), L.A. DramaLogue best play (CLOSE TIES). She was twice runner-up for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (GOODBYE FREDDY and NIGHTINGALE), and was awarded a “special commendation.”
Liz teaches Memoir workshops at the Spencertown Academy. Her daughter, Jenny Mackenzie, is a documentary filmmaker.