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About the Speaker

Lynn Novick, co-director and producer of The U.S. and the Holocaust, has been making landmark documentary films about American life and culture, history, politics, sports, art, architecture, literature, and music for more than 30 years. She has created nearly 100 hours of acclaimed programming for PBS in collaboration with Ken Burns, including Ernest Hemingway, The Vietnam War, Baseball, Jazz, Frank Lloyd Wright, The War, and Prohibition -- these landmark series have garnered 19 Emmy nominations. One of the most respected documentary filmmakers and story tellers in America, Novick herself has received Emmy, Peabody and Alfred I. duPont Columbia Awards.

College Behind Bars, Novick’s debut as solo director, premiered at the New York Film Festival and aired on PBS in 2019. Produced by Sarah Botstein, the series immerses viewers in the transformational journey of a small group of incarcerated men and women enrolled in one of the most rigorous prison education programs in America – the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI).

Novick’s next project as solo director and writer is a multi-part PBS series on the history of crime and punishment in America, slated for release in 2026. Following The U.S. and the Holocaust, she is collaborating with Burns, Botstein and writer Geoffrey C. Ward on a six-hour series on the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. She is a magna cum laude graduate of Yale with honors in American Studies, and lives in New York City.