Jeff Duncan

Father of six, grandfather of seven, and husband of one, Jeff Duncan is a professor of English at Eastern Michigan University. For fifteen years he wrote literary criticism, and got a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for his efforts. But as lit crit got more and more mired in theory and riddled with jargon, he got more and more turned off, until finally he wrote a couple of freshman composition textbooks that touted the virtues and benefits of clarity and grace. Having no more to say about composition, he began writing plays, dirty plays for grownups, clean plays for kids--dramas and comedies, the books and lyrics for musicals (two of them in the style of English Christmas Pantomime), a revue about baseball, and a very un-grand libretto for an opera. To date he has had some thirty works produced in Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and Kentucky. One of his dramas was dubbed "Best Play of the Year" by the Ann Arbor News, and he is Playwright in Residence at Wild Swan Theater, a professional children's theater group that has won a slew of awards. As a change of pace, and to set the record straight, he wrote LOW CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS. At the moment he is working on a musical based on the story of Abraham and Sarah, and he is writing lyrics that he hopes his youngest son will use in his rock band.