Jan Eliasberg, HANNAH’S WAR

Jan Eliasberg is the award-winning screenwriter, director and debut author of Hannah's War. This literary spy thriller follows a female Jewish physicist and her work on the atomic bomb during WWII. Jan referred to writing this book as the best creative experience of her life and I can see why! I loved chatting with Jan about the historic New York Times article that sparked her imagination, the exciting task of exploring a male-dominated world from a woman’s point of view, her personal family connection to the source material and her deep need to write a novel after experiencing success in film and television. Jan has written and directed dramatic pilots for CBS, NBC, and ABC and directed episodes of Wiseguy, 21 Jump Street, 13 Reasons Why, Parenthood, Blue Bloods, NCIS: Los Angeles, and many others. As a screenwriter, Jan has written films driven by strong female leads including Fly Girls with Nicole Kidman @nicolekidman and Cameron Diaz @camerondiaz and she was the first woman to direct Miami Vice. Her debut feature film was Past Midnight starring Paul Giamatti and the late Natasha Richardson. Jan graduated from Wesleyan University and has two MFAs, one from the Yale School of Drama and Directing, and one from Warren Wilson in fiction. We did an event this week together about women geniuses with Janice Kaplan and Shoshanna Gruss which was fantastic!