Hometown(s) Chicago, New York, Cambridge

Area of Expertise: Agenting, Publishing, Acting

Most Memorable Theatre Experience: Herbert Berghof off Broadway in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, Sweeney Todd  with Angela Lansbury, Tom Stoppard’s trilogy The Coast of Utopia, and WAR HORSE at the Lincoln Center.

Greatest Passions Outside of Work: Reading, travel friendships, animals, opera

Favorite Music: Mozart, Mahler, Puccini, anything by Sondheim or Cole Porter, and  hearing my godson Ian McCamy fiddling Celtic reels in Irish Pubs.

Sources of Inspiration: friends, colleagues, Pema Chodron, Kharma Choling in Vermont. My mentors: Herbert Berghof, Mira Rostova,  Ian and Betty Ballantine, Ellie Hakim and Jeremy Cott.   My father who taught me to “know thyself”, and my mother who taught me to move down to the empty seats.

Most Memorable Agenting Experiences: Participated placing the Broadway rights to After the Fall, by Arthur Miller, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead , by Tom Stoppard, The Deputy, by Rolf Hochhuth, The Lion in Love by Shelagh Delaney all while working with Kurt Hellmer and Willliam Morrris on foreign rights. Nurturing the work of Murray Mednick, David Scott Milton, Tony Barsha, Rochelle Owens, George Birimisi and other young, wild playwrights at the Theatre Genesis in St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery in the 70’s.

Carolyn Jenks is a  publishing  veteran with a proven track record. She has devoted her career to developing and launching new artists and writers. Her early training in Chicago with Titta Ruffo of the La Scala Opera and Flovia Drazy in Stanislavsky theory informed her work across disciplines.    She held previous positions with Ballantine Books, Charles Scribner, Kurt Hellmer/William Morris (handling foreign rights for Iris Murdoch, Friedrich Duerrenmatt, Max Frisch, and many others.) Among her most successful books is The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant which having sold ,  3 million copies has become a classic.


Ms Jenks co-authored The Patient’s Little Instruction Book,  with her royalties donated to breast cancer research. She is a member of the Writers’ Guild East, and a signatory of the Writers’ Guild of America.