Timberlake Wertenbaker

Timberlake Wertenbaker was born in New York City but grew up primarily in Basque country in the town of Ciboure, France. Her father, Charles Wertenbaker, was a journalist, as was her mother, who’s best known for the book she wrote about his death. After graduating in 1966 from St. John’s College, Wertenbaker began to write, though she soon started teaching full-time. It wasn’t until the 1980s that she moved to London and started writing plays. In 1983, she became a writer for the theater company Shared Experience before moving on in 1984 to write for the Royal Court Theatre. While writing for the Royal Court, she put out The Grace of Mary Traverse, for which she won her first award. In 1988 she debuted her most famous play, Our Country’s Good, which she adapted from Thomas Keneally’s novel The Playmaker. All in all, she has written 29 original plays, in addition to a number of translations and radio programs. She now lives with her husband (the writer John Man) in Norwich, England, where she is the Chair of Playwriting at the University of East Anglia.