Judith Edwards

Judith Edwards has led an “eclectic” life, and plans to continue to do so.  Born in Denver, Colorado, she grew up in Southern California.  “My Dad’s family were Colorado ranchers and we traveled a lot around the West when I was a child.  I was a voluminous reader and always wrote.”  At eighteen, Judy left the University of California at Berkeley to move east and attend the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theater, studying voice and languages privately.  After the birth of her third child she went back to college, receiving a Master of Arts in Creative Writing and, later, a Masters of Social Work.

In l972 she moved with her family from New York City to a farm in Vermont, and taught acting and creative writing at Johnson State College, housing a theater company in her barn.  Imagination Players was funded by the Vermont and New Hampshire Arts Councils, and toured those states.  She produced and directed two of her own adult plays, one an adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, and over twenty musical plays for children.  She wrote for many New England and other publications, including Vermont Life, Yankee, McCall’s, and Musical America.

Judy returned to New York after teaching at Florida International University in Miami, and the Emma Willard School in Troy, New York, to pursue acting and directing.  Her children then in college, she traveled all over the country with five one-woman shows, as well as appearing in plays in New York City and Dorset, Vermont. 

Her latest book, The Great Expedition of Lewis and Clark, is her third book on that subject.  “I discovered Lewis and Clark while writing a play set in the West.  I stumbled on Bernard De Voto’s Journals of Lewis and Clark in a library.  I fell into those journals and have never emerged.”  She believes that the Lewis and Clark Expedition is the “great geographical unfolding of our country, and a human adventure story of epic proportions.”   Other books on American history followed an early book on Lewis and Clark.

Currently Judy writes, sings with The Ascutney Trio, writes an advice column for a local paper and a monthly mental health article in an area newspaper, has an arts-related interview show on SAPA TV in southern Vermont, and has a thriving clinical social work practice.  She of course, and as usual, has several new writing projects “in the works.”