Jen Marlowe is an author/documentary filmmaker/playwright and human rights/social justice activist. She is the founder of Donkeysaddle Projects, which creates pieces within the realms of film, theatre, and creative non-fiction to amplify stories of resistance and struggles for equality and liberation.
Jen’s most recent project is her play, There Is A Field, addressing the killing of a 17-year old Palestinian citizen of Israel by Israeli police, and connecting the issues of state violence, structural injustice and supremacy in Israel and the U.S.
Jen’s most recent documentary film, Witness Bahrain (2015), documents the aftermath of the Bahraini regime’s crackdown on pro-democracy and human rights activists.
Her previous film, One Family in Gaza (2011), profiled one family’s experience during and after the 2009 assault on the Gaza Strip. One Family in Gaza received the Audience Award at the Bellingham Human Rights Film Festival in 2013.
Jen’s most recent book, I Am Troy Davis (Haymarket Books, 2013), was written with and about Georgia death row prisoner Troy Davis, who was executed in 2011 despite a world-wide outcry over his strong case of innocence. Maya Angelou said about I Am Troy Davis: "Here is a shout for human rights and for the abolition of the death penalty. This book, I Am Troy Davis, should be read and cherished."
Jen’s previous book, The Hour of Sunlight (Nation Books, 2011), was co-authored with and tells the story of Sami Al Jundi, a Palestinian man from the Old City of Jerusalem who spent ten years in Israeli prison for being involved in militant anti-occupation activities as a youth and who has spent the last two decades of his life working towards nonviolence and peaceful reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. The Hour of Sunlight won the London-based Middle East Monitor’s 2012 Palestine Book Award for the best English language book about Palestine.
Jen has made two films about Sudan. In 2004, she traveled to Northern Darfur and Eastern Chad with colleagues Adam Shapiro and Aisha Bain to make the documentary film Darfur Diaries: Message from Home (2006) which won Best of Fest at the Transcontinental Film Festival. She also wrote the accompanying book Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival (Nation Books, 2006). Darfur Diaries was included in the 2007 edition of the Best American Non-Required Reading, edited by Dave Eggers.
Rebuilding Hope (2009), follows three Sudanese-American young men on their first homecoming trip back to South Sudan, to discover whether their homes and families survived the civil war and to build a school, drill wells and bring medical supplies to their villages in Sudan. Alice Walker said of the film: "Rebuilding Hope...is a deeply moving study in loss and suffering, in courage, in wisdom about the meaning of Life as Humans that seems as old as continent of Africa."
Jen has also worked on video projects about Honduras, Brazil, Gaza, and the U.S. Criminal Justice System for human rights organizations including Amnesty International USA, Frontline Defenders, the Innocence Network and Death Penalty Focus.
Jen’s writings about Palestine/Israel, Sudan and the criminal justice system can be found in The Nation, The Guardian, The Progressive, Tomdispatch.com, Ha’aretz, Seattle Times and Yes! Magazine. She has been awarded travel grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and The Nation Institute Investigative Fund and was granted a writing residency at Hedgebrook.
Last updated July 2017