On May 17 at the breathtaking Three Sixty° Tribeca, we honored authors, directors, and storytellers — leaders who write the world. From the view…
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Jenni Konner
Honoree
Jennifer Konner is an American TV writer and producer. She is best known as the showrunner and writer of the HBO series Girls. With Lena Dunham she runs a production company as well as the newsletter, Lenny Letter. After finishing school, Konner began working with friend and writing partner Alexandra Rushfield. They were both hired as writers for Judd Apatow’s sitcom Undeclared. They then went on to create two short-lived network shows together: Help Me Help You and In the Motherhood. After that the pair stopped writing together and Konner began working as a script doctor. She was hired on a few big-budget Hollywood films to help the writers flesh out their female characters, most notably Transformers 3. Konner was first introduced to Lena Dunham’s work through watching Dunham’s 2010 film Tiny Furniture. Konner was a big fan of the film and so jumped at the opportunity when HBO offered her the role of supervising Dunham for her new series Girls. Since then Konner has become the show’s official co-show-runner, an executive producer and she has written occasional episodes. The show premiered on HBO in 2012 and has since won numerous awards. Dunham and Konner are good friends and have collaborated on several other projects. They also started a production company together called A Casual Romance, with the intent of addressing the gender imbalance in TV and film. On her relationship with Dunham, Konner says “We just really love spending time together, which is good because we mostly have to be together all day every day.” In January 2015, Dunham and Konner released a documentary for HBO about Hilary Knight, the illustrator of the children's books Eloise. Konner worked as the Executive Producer on the project and it was their first production with their company A Casual Romance. The production company's most recent work, Suited, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2016. The film is a documentary that looks at a Brooklyn based tailoring company that tailors suits for members of the LGBTQ community. It was directed by Jason Benjamin and produced by Konner and Dunham. Suited premiered on HBO in June 2016. Konner and Lena Dunham collaborated to create Lenny Letter, a weekly online feminist newsletter. The pair started the project with the intention of giving a platform to young female voices to discuss feminist issues. The newsletter features political essays, personal stories, interviews, artwork and even an advice column from Dunham and Konner themselves called "Letters to Lenny." One notable article was an essay written by actress Jennifer Lawrence about the gender wage gap in Hollywood.