Eve Ensler

Eve Ensler Speaker Biography

Tony Award Winning Playwright, Global Activist and Author of The Vagina Monologues

Eve Ensler is an award-winning playwright, women’s rights activist, performer and the author of The Vagina Monologues, which has been translated into over 48 languages, performed in over 140 countries, including sold-out runs at both Off-Broadway’s Westside Theater and on London’s West End (2002 Olivier Award nomination, Best Entertainment), and run for 10 years in Mexico City and Paris.

Writings and Publications

In 2006, Ensler released Insecure at Last, a political memoir. In 2006 she also co-edited A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer, an anthology of writings about violence against women. In February 2010, I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World was released by Random House and made The New York Times Best Seller list.

The Vagina Monologues, The Good Body, Necessary Targets, Insecure at Last and A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer was published by Villard/Random House. Vagina Warriors, words by Ensler and photos by Joyce Tenneson, was published by Bulfinch Press for V-Day 2005.

Ensler has written numerous articles for The Guardian, Huffington Post, Washington Post, Utne Reader, International Herald Tribune, Glamour Magazine and Marie Claire as well as a regular column in O Magazine.

In spring 2013 she released her newest book, In the Body of the World, a visionary memoir of separation and connection – to the body, the self, and the world – published by Metropolitan Books.

Theater and Film Work

In 2004, Ensler performed her play The Good Body on Broadway in New York City. This was followed by a 20-city national tour in 2005. In August 2010 Emotional Creature was first workshopped at New York Stage and Film at Vassar College. The show was recently workshopped in Johannesburg, South Africa, followed by Paris, France. The show premiered in the United States at Berkeley Repertory and then moved to Off-Broadway. In the summer of 2010, Ensler’s play Here was filmed live by Sky Television in London, UK. Eve’s other plays include Mango, The Treatment, Necessary Targets, Conviction, Ladies, Lemonade, The Depot, Floating Rhoda and the Glue Man, Extraordinary Measures and Reef and Particle.

Ensler’s film credits include an HBO film version of The Vagina Monologues (2002). She also produced the film What I Want My Words to Do to You, a documentary about the writing group she led at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women. The film premiered and won the Freedom of Expression Award at Sundance Film Festival and premiered nationally on PBS’s “P.O.V.” in December 2003.

Awards and Recognition

She was awarded the 2011 Isabelle Stevenson Tony Award, which recognizes an individual from the theater community who has made a substantial contribution of volunteered time and effort on behalf of humanitarian, social service, or charitable organizations. Other awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting and an Obie, in addition to a number of honorary degrees.

In November 2009, Ensler was named one of US News & World Report’s ”Best Leaders” in association with the Center for Public Leadership (CPL) at Harvard Kennedy School. In 2010 she was named one of “125 Women Who Changed Our World” by Good Housekeeping Magazine. In 2011 she was named one of Newsweek’s “150 Women Who Changed the World” and The Guardian’s “100 Most Influential Women.”

Global Advocate for Women

Ensler’s experience performing The Vagina Monologues inspired her to create V-Day, a global activist movement to stop violence against women and girls. She has devoted her life to stopping violence, envisioning a planet in which women and girls will be free to thrive, rather than merely survive.

Today, V-Day raises funds and awareness through benefit productions of Ensler’s award-winning play The Vagina Monologues and other artistic works. In 2013, over 5,800 V-Day benefits took place. To date, the V-Day movement has raised over $100 million; educated millions about the issue of violence against women and the efforts to end it; crafted international educational, media, and PSA campaigns; reopened shelters; and funded over 13,000 community-based anti-violence programs and safe houses in Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Kenya, Egypt, and Iraq. V-Day’s most recent global campaign, ONE BILLION RISING, galvanized over one billion women and men on a global day of action towards ending violence against women and girls in February 2013. V-Day has received numerous acknowledgements and awards and is one of the top-rated organizations on both Charity Navigator and Guidestar.