JESSICA HARPER Actress, Songwriter, Author
BIOGRAPHY I BOOKS I PRESENTATIONS I BOOK ORDERING
Since the late 1980s, Jessica has lived in Los Angeles with her husband, Tom, and their daughters, Nora (born in 1991) and Elizabeth (1989). When the girls were younger, they inspired Jessica to write and record her first CD of children's music, A Wonderful Life. The 1994 release won both a Parent's Choice Gold Award and a National Association of Parenting Publications Award and was featured in numerous magazines and newspapers including Entertainment Weekly, Parenting, Family Fun, Billboard and TV Guide's Parent's Guide, which stated, ÒHer lyrics amaze and delightÉthey rank with the best of contemporary children's poetry.Ó Her subsequent albums were praised and awarded similarly, and of her 2002 Rounder Kids release, Inside Out, the Los Angeles Times said, ÒÉchildren's music doesn't get better than this.Ó
Jessica's reach to children expanded beyond the world of music beginning with her first children's book from Penguin Putnam in 1999, I Forgot My Shoes. She has since collaborated on several books for HarperCollins with her sister, Lindsay Harper duPont, as illustrator. Of their 2002 book, Lizzie's Do's and Don'ts, Kirkus Reviews said, ÒWith keen insight and a comic touch, Harper spearheads the elemental truth of parenting; amid the squabbles and strife is the steadfast love a parent and child share.Ó
Jessica says, "I love the writing process. Each story is like a puzzle: I start out with what I think is a wonderful idea and figure out how to tell it in the most original and concise way. Sometimes I rhyme the text and sometimes I don't. Either way, figuring out how to give children an affecting literary experience in just 32 pages is a challenge I enjoy."
Jessica's most recent books are I Like Where I Am, Four Boys Named Jordan and Lizzy's Ups And Downs.
Over the past few years, Jessica has combined her performance and writing skills to do author presentations for children and adults. She is also using her books and music as the basis for a series of Saturday afternoon children's concerts, opening at the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles in October 2004. |
Jessica
Harper is an award-winning actress who has more than a dozen features
to her credit, including co-starring roles in Stardust Memories
with Woody Allen, Pennies From Heaven with Steve
Martin, My Favorite Year with Peter O'Toole and most
recently Minority Report with Tom Cruise. She's made
dozens of television appearances, and her stage experience ranges
from starring in Hair on Broadway to co-starring in
a regional production of National Anthems with Al Pacino.