Aspen Writers’ Foundation Names New Directors

February 7, 2013

Media contact: 
Julie Comins Pickrell
Interim Director
Aspen Writers’ Foundation
970-925-3122, ext. 1#
970-274-2352 cellular
Julie@aspenwriters.org

ASPEN WRITERS’ FOUNDATION NAMES NEW DIRECTORS

Maurice LaMee as Director and Adrienne Brodeur as Creative Director will take the reigns of the Aspen-based nonprofit

Aspen, Colo. (February 7, 2013) — Aspen Writers’ Foundation, a program of the Aspen Institute and a leading literary center and stage for the world’s most prominent authors, announces the hire of award-winning nonprofit arts executive Maurice (Mo) LaMee as Director and award-winning editor and author Adrienne Brodeur as Creative Director. LaMee, who has been recognized as one of Colorado’s leading nonprofit arts executives, brings with him an impressive list of management credentials and will be based in Aspen. He will be charged with overseeing all AWF program initiatives, day-to-day operations and organizational development efforts. With deep roots in the New York publishing world, Brodeur will be based in New York City with frequent travel to Aspen. In conjunction with LaMee, she will guide the organization’s artistic vision and program initiatives, cultivate key partnerships in the literary world and work to enhance the AWF brand at the national and international level. 

“We could not be more pleased with the new leadership team, nor more excited for the direction of the Aspen Writers’ Foundation,” said Elliot Gerson, executive vice president of public and policy programs for the Aspen Institute. “Individually, Mo and Adrienne bring an impressive roster of accomplishments and professional successes in the arts. Together they make an extraordinary team. The future of AWF never looked brighter.” 

With unanimous support and enthusiasm from the Aspen Writers’ Foundation Advisory Board and Aspen Institute senior management team, the new leadership will work closely together to direct and elevate all AWF programs, and fulfill the near and long-term goals of the 37-year old organization.

“Mo’s remarkable track record of smart, sustainable nonprofit arts management with a commitment to artistic excellence paired with Adrienne’s creative vision and deep connections in the literary world make this an unbeatable team,” said Dennis Vaughn, president of the Aspen Writers’ Foundation Advisory Board.  “With these two at the helm, the possibilities for the organization are limitless.”

For more information about Aspen Writers’ Foundation and its literary programs and events, including the current 16th annual Winter Words series, visit www.aspenwriters.org. 

More about the new leadership at Aspen Writers’ Foundation 
Maurice LaMee is the former Executive and Artistic Director of the Creede Repertory Theatre (CRT), a position he held from 2000 until the summer of 2012. During his tenure at CRT he helped transform the small summer stock company located in a remote and isolated part of Colorado into one of the most accomplished and highly acclaimed professional arts organizations in the Southwest. CRT received a multitude of national and regional accolades, including Outstanding Achievement in Theatre from the National Theatre Conference (previous winners include The Public, American Repertory Theatre, Steppenwolf and the Goodman). LaMee led efforts to create numerous new programs and partnerships at CRT and ran multi-million dollar capital campaigns to successful conclusion. In 2011, LaMee was named Colorado’s “Theatre Person of the Year” by the Denver Post. In 2010 the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation awarded him a Livingston Fellowship for his contribution to the Colorado nonprofit sector. He is married to a fifth generation Aspenite, actress Trary Maddalone. They have fourteen-year-old twins, Genevieve and Kieran.

Adrienne Brodeur is an award-winning editor and published author with more than fifteen years of writing, editing and publishing experience, in books as well as magazines. She founded the literary magazine Zoetrope: All-Story with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, and was its editor in chief from 1996-2002, during which time it won the prestigious National Magazine Award for Best Fiction (the youngest quarterly publication ever to do so). Her debut novel Man Camp, published by Random House in 2005, was selected for Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers program. At Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, she was a consulting editor from 2006-2013, acquiring and editing literary and commercial fiction and memoir. Brodeur is an executive consultant on a television series in development with CBS/Warner Bros. based on an essay she published in the New York Times’ Modern Love column in 2012. She has been a fiction judge for the National Book Award, the National Magazine Awards, the New York Public Library’s Young Lion’s fiction award and many other contests. Currently, she is writing a memoir. 

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The Aspen Writers’ Foundation was founded in Aspen in 1976 as a cutting edge poetry conference and literary magazine. Today the Aspen Writers’ Foundation is one of the nation’s leading literary centers and a stage for the world’s most prominent authors. AWF programs employ literature as a tool for provoking thought, broadening perspectives, fostering connections, inspiring creativity, and giving voice. Since 2009, the AWF has partnered with the Aspen Institute, underscoring the highest humanistic ideals of Aspen Institute founder Walter Paepcke: to better understand human challenges by cultivating one’s inner life through the exchange of words, stories, and ideas.

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