Judith Claire Mitchell

Judith Claire Mitchell graduated BHS in 1970. She went on to receive a Bachelor’s Degree from Barnard College. After years as a paralegal, she changed course to pursue her writing passion, first nurtured at BHS. She enrolled in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and received a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1998.
Judy went on to receive a writing fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin. At the end of her fellowship year she was asked to stay on, first as an adjunct professor, but soon after as a tenure track professor. Her first novel - The Last Day of the War- was published in 2004 by Pantheon Books, an imprint of Random House. The New York Times referred to it as a “bravura performance.”
Judy is currently the Dorothy Draheim Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, where she teaches and directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing. In 2015 she published her second novel- A Reunion of Ghosts—a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and Harold Ribalow Prize, and the recipient of the Edna Ferber Prize and Friends of Literature Prize.
Judy is married to visual artist Don Friedlich. They live in Madison, Wisconsin