Val Bodurtha

Val Bodurtha was selected as BookLogix’s 2015 winner of its annual Young Writers Contest for her debut novel, “The History Makers,” an alternative history she wrote at 17. The novel has gone on to win a coveted Silver Benjamin Franklin award for Teen Fiction from the Independent Book Publishers Association, the industry's largest trade group.

Now, a recent graduate and classics major from the University of Chicago, Val is an active writer, performer and producer, with a specialty in comedy.

Her writing has garnered more than two dozen writing awards, and she has had three of her plays staged. That includes an Off-Broadway production of “What Really Happened,” a retelling of pivotal events through history, which was recognized by Scholastic’s national writing competition and featured at a worldwide play festival that David Letterman’s company sponsored in 2014.

In Chicago, Val has been a mainstay, on stage and off, of Off-Off Campus, the oldest collegiate sketch and improv troupe in the country. She has opened as a stand-up comedian for major headliners such as Jerrod Carmichael, and worked at Second City with the backing of UChicago’s Metcalf Internship program. She has been featured often in news coverage of young comedians and recently made waves for pressing Madame Tussaud's museum in NY to add a wax likeness of actor Paul Giamatti. "The country is pretty divided right now," she told TimeOut.com. "We think that this is one thing that can unite everyone."

Before college, Val volunteered as an EMT at her local hospital in Stamford, Conn., and was named Horace Mann Idol by her school for her offbeat banjo-playing.