KINGSTON, RI – March 5, 2025 – Filmmaker Joan Tewkesbury will visit the Harrington School on Friday, March 21st to conduct a screenwriting workshop with 35 film students. Prior to her workshop, there will be screenings for two of her films: Nashville on March 19th at 6pm (Edwards Auditorium), and a Q&A with Joan, moderated by Professor Justin Wyatt on March 20th at 6pm (Hope Room, Welcome Center). The screening and Q&A are open to the public.

Joan Tewkesbury is an American film and television director, writer, producer, choreographer and actress. She had a long association with the celebrated director Robert Altman, writing the screenplays for Thieves Like Us (1974), and Nashville (1975), widely regarded as “Altman’s masterpiece”, and which earned her a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay. 

Nashville is regarded as one of the greatest films of the New Hollywood period. In 1992, Nashville was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.  In 2007, the movie was ranked on AFI’s 100 Years 100 Movies list.  Entertainment Weekly ranked it the ninth-greatest film in history. 

Tewkesbury is regarded as a pioneer for women working creatively in the film and television industry. She forged a path when very few women were directing and was able to leverage her screenwriting skills to develop directing projects and assignments. She became an inspiration to many who felt that their talent and ideas were unappreciated by the mainstream industry.

For the past two decades, she has contributed to the Sundance Institute with writing and directing workshops. Through these efforts, Tewkesbury has continued to mentor the next generation of female directors and screenwriters along with many others. She has also taught screenwriting, at the University of Southern California, with her screenwriting workshop “Designed Obstacles, Spontaneous Response” travelling throughout the United States, Israel, and Japan.  Since 2003, Tewkesbury has lived in Tesuque, New Mexico.

In 2011, Tewkesbury published her first novel, Ebba and the Green Dresses of Olivia Gomez in a Time of Conflict and War. 

This event is sponsored by the Harrington School of Communication and Media. For more information about Joan Tewkesbury’s visit to URI, please connect with Professor Justin Wyatt, justinw@uri.edu. Wyatt’s new book, Robert Altman’s Nashville: An Archival Exploration, will be published by the University of Michigan Press in January 2026.