Jessica Blank

Jessica Blank is an American actor, writer and director who has appeared in film, television, and theater. She has appeared in movies including The Namesake (dir. Mira Nair), The Exonerated (dir. Bob Balaban, for Court TV), You’re Nobody til Somebody Kills You (exec.prod. Spike Lee), and the indies Undermind and On the Road With Judas (Sundance 2007). She has worked in television on The Bronx is Burning, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Rescue Me, Guiding Light, and One Life to Live. She is co-Artistic Director of THE FIRE DEPT, an Off-Broadway theater company.

Jessica Blank and her husband Erik Jensen co-wrote The Exonerated, a play based on interviews they conducted with over 40 exonerated death row inmates. In spring 2002, they co-directed The Exonerated at The Actors' Gang Theater. That production was nominated for five Ovation Awards and 3 NAACP Awards, won the Ovation for Best World Premiere Play and has toured universities nationwide. Bob Balaban's production of The Exonerated ran for over 600 performances Off-Broadway, toured nationally, was made into a movie for Court TV starring Brian Dennehy, Danny Glover, Delroy Lindo, Aidan Quinn, and Susan Sarandon, and was produced internationally in Dublin, Edinburgh, London, Japan, Mexico, and Italy. The Exonerated won the Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics Circle, Fringe First, and Herald Angel Awards, and was nominated for the Dramatists’ Guild Hull-Warriner Award and the John Gassner Playwriting Award. It has also received awards from Amnesty International, the American Bar Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and Death Penalty Focus. The Exonerated has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian and Japanese.

Jessica Blank's first novel, Almost Home, will be published in October 2007 by Hyperion. Jessica’s writing has been published in magazines and journals including The Believer, The Dramatist, Another Magazine, and Theatre History Studies. "Living Justice," Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s book on the making of The Exonerated, was published in 2005 by Simon and Schuster.