JANE IREDALE
Jane
Iredale was nominated for a Tony Award for the book to the Broadway musical
Wind in the Willows. She was the co-producer and script editor of
the Peabody Award-winning Mark Twain series on PBS, which included Life
on the Mississippi, The Mysterious Stranger, The Innocents Abroad,
Pudd'nhead Wilson, and the mini-series Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn. She wrote for Orson Welles and Lillian Gish on the Emmy Award-winning
series The Silent Years and for Henry Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Vincent
Price and Claire Bloom on the PBS series Anyone for Tennyson?She adapted Carlos Fuentes' novel Where the Air is Clear for the screen and scripted the soon-to-be-filmed golf comedy Dog Leg Right.
Originally from London, Ms. Iredale for several years headed her own casting company in New York. She now alternates writing assignments with a career as the founder and president of America's leading natural mineral cosmetics company.
WILLIAM PERRY
William
Perry was nominated for two Tony Awards for the score and lyrics to the
Broadway musical Wind in the Willows. He has written numerous film
scores, including those of the Mark Twain series on PBS, which he also produced.
For 12 years he was Music Director of New York's Museum of Modern Art, where
he composed and performed more than 200 scores for the Museum's silent film
collection.His other produced stage works include the musical Xanadu (lyrics by William Wheeling) and Mark Twain - the Musical! (music and lyrics). His current works-in-progress include two comedies, Composers in Residence and A Little Off the Top.
Perry trained as a classical composer with Paul Hindemith, Walter Piston and Randall Thompson, and his music has been performed by the Chicago Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal, the Vienna Symphony, the Slovak Philharmonic and numerous other orchestras. His many recordings on compact disc include the Trumpet Concerto, a Summer Nocturne for Flute and Orchestra, six suites entitled The Silent Years, and the orchestral collection Life on the Mississippi: The Film Music of William Perry.
Perry is also an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning film and television producer and has produced and scored more than more than 60 programs for PBS.
ROGER McGOUGH
Roger
McGough was nominated for a Tony Award for his lyrics to the Broadway musical
Wind in the Willows. One of England's most popular and prolific poets,
McGough was awarded an OBE by Queen Elizabeth in 1997 and a CBE in 2005.
He has published more than 50 books, and 16 of his stage plays have been
produced as well as numerous film, television and radio scripts.McGough came to prominence in the 1960s as one of the Liverpool Poets, and his early rock group, the Scaffold, with such hit songs as "Lily the Pink," was the chief contemporary rival of that other Liverpool group.
McGough performs his poetry throughout the world and has established a huge television audience through his works for children, including Sky in the Pie and The Great Smile Robbery. PBS introduced his poetry nationally in America in a program called Roger McGough and the Liverpool Lads, which starred Jim Dale.
KENNETH GRAHAME
Kenneth
Grahame (1859-1932) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1879 he joined
the staff of the Bank of England as a gentleman-clerk, rising to become
Secretary to the Bank in 1898. He retired after the publication of his
most successful work, The Wind in the Willows (1908), a fantasy
about Mole, Rat, and other animals in the English countryside.Grahame had created the character of Toad to amuse his little son, Alistair, and additional material from letters he later wrote to boy became the basis for his beloved children's classic.
Other works include Pagan Papers (1893), The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898), which includes his most famous short story, "The Reluctant Dragon."
