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Debbie Danielpour Biography

       Debbie Danielpour writes screenplays, libretti, fiction and essays. She has been a professor of screenwriting and fiction for over twenty years—at San Francisco State University, Emerson College, Harvard University, a variety of seminars in the U.S. and Europe, and now at Boston University where she was awarded Teacher of the Year in 2011 and 2017 is now co-chair of  the  department of film and television. Her seventh motion picture screenplay, We’re All Here, is currently in development with Rimer Films. Her most recent films, Halfway Somewhere Else (2013) and His Last Game (2015), were screened at Cannes among many other festivals.
       Professor Danielpour collaborated with Toni Morrison on the libretto for Margaret Garner (Philadelphia Opera, NY City Opera 2005), composer Richard Danielpour. Her commissioned libretto, The Great Good Thing, for composer Bruce Wolosoff was workshopped at Opera Mission, and her musical, The King’s Ear, with composer Matti Kovler, was workshopped at Boston University in 2017.
       Her fiction and essays have been published in a number of literary and academic journals, among them: “Land Where My Father’s Died,” Agni; “A Wedding,” Salamander; “Woodchuck,” Natural Bridge; “Imitation and Adaptation: A Screenwriting Pedagogy, Journal of Screenwriting; and “Women Screenwriters of Iran,” in International Women Screenwriters, Palgrave Macmillan, UK, 2015.
Professor Danielpour has appeared at conferences and on radio, most recently: “Oscar on Mars: What Makes for a Great Film Adaptation,” on Radio Boston, WBUR, an NPR affiliate; “What’s Opera Got to Do With It? What Screenwriters Can Learn From the Opera Libretto,” at the Screenwriting Research Network Conference,
London; “Stretching the Television Limited Series Too Far: The Handmaid’s Tale and Big Little Lies, ” SRN Conference, Milan, Italy; “Failure of Imagination: How a Writer Breaks out of the Box When Creating Characters,” U.S. Navy Tech. Ops., Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
       She has written seven feature screenplays, three teleplays and has consulted on for film production companies and individuals, among them Fox Searchlight Pictures, Focus Features and Miramax.
       Professor Danielpour has an AB from Harvard College, an MA in film production and screenwriting from San Francisco State University, and an MFA in fiction and literature from the Bennington Writing Seminars.

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