Ann E. Eskridge

Written on August 25th, 2009 by Sylvia Hubbard

Biography

Ann E. Eskridge has been involved with media for almost 30 years. She holds a BA in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma, an MA in Telecommunications from Michigan State University, and an MFA in Creative Writing at Spalding University in Kentucky.

She has written freelance articles for American Visions Magazine, Learning Magazine, Detroiter Magazine, The Detroit News, and American Profile magazine—a Sunday national supplement.

She was chosen to participate in the American Film Institute’s Summer Dramatic Scriptwriting Workshop, The Warner Brother’s Regional Comedy Development Workshop, and the Sundance Institute’s Children’s Playwriting Workshop; three of the most prestigious workshops on film and playwriting in the country.

She has written for stage and screen including the PBS Wonderworks movie, Brother Future, which won a Director’s Guild Award, a CEBA Award of Distinction and a National Programming Award. She has also written special theatrical presentations for Greenfield Village at the Henry Ford, a museum that replicates historical lifestyles. Her vignettes include: The J.R. Jones Store, The Hermitage Plantation, and The McGuffey Reader.

Her book and play, The Sanctuary, Cobblehill, 1994, was chosen as one of the 400 best children’s books for that year and was optioned by Producer Bill Blinn (Fame), and Sundance. Two monologues from the play are included in Child’s Play; an anthology of children’s play monologues. The Sanctuary was also the basis for a children’s grief and bereavement program at Detroit’s Children’s Center, funded by the National Funeral Directors Association.

Her non-fiction book, Slave Uprisings and Runaways: Fighting for Freedom and the Underground Railroad, was published by Enslow Publishers in 2004. A Young Adult fiction book on the Underground Railroad is under consideration for publication.

As a producer and writer, she wrote the documentary: Echoes Across the Prairie: a documentary about Oklahoma’s black towns, which won a 1998 Gold Apple Award at the National Educational Media Network and was part of two museum displays. She is the producer and writer of a series of college “vignettes” for cell phone downloads in China called American Life, retitled: Crazy English.

She has taught writing and scriptwriting at Wayne State University and currently teaches at the University of Detroit Mercy, where she is now the Director of the African American Studies Program. She also teaches scriptwriting for various workshops and writing forums.

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