Playwriting plaudits for a member of our Biography team

We hope you join us in congratulating Molly Hagan, of our Current Biography team, who has been chosen as a national finalist in the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival's Ten-Minute Play Award for her work, Spaceships and Things That Look Like Them.
Molly's play, along with the other ten-minute plays in the final, will be staged at the Kennedy Center Family Theater in Washington, D.C. on April 22.
We wish Molly the best of luck in her category.

Break a leg, Molly! (Do you say that to the writer?)

Molly has worked at H.W. Wilson since October 2010, and Inside Wilson asked her a few questions about her writing.

What inspires you as a writer?
As a playwright, I'm inspired by theatricality and the challenge of writing for the stage. The neat thing about theater is that what we see is largely dependent on language. The play exists in the mind of the audience.
At Current Biography, I am interested in introducing readers to fascinating people who they may not know.


Of all the profiles you've worked on for Current Biography, whose was the most interesting or surprising?
I just finished working on a profile of Connie Rice. She's a civil rights lawyer and founder of an "action tank" (as opposed to a think tank) called the Advancement Project. She's also an expert on gang warfare in Los Angeles - and is former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's cousin. I had never heard of her until I came across an article about her on the Daily Beast. Rice is incredibly smart and seemingly fearless. I could have written a book about her.

How has access to Wilson resources helped you in your writing?
Working at Current Biography, I have access to the life stories of thousands of people. I have found lots of inspiration for characters, not only in the research for the biographies that I write, but in the countless biographies that exist in our database as well. I think we do a good job of providing a detailed portrait of our subjects, rather than just a list of their accomplishments.