Rebecca Miller: BA from Yale, majoring in painting. Though she had written short stories since adolescence, Millerleft Yale planning on being a painter, showed at Castelli Galleri and Victoria Munroe Gallery in New York, then began making short films. At first these films were extensions of her paintings; gradually they became more and more narrative. In order to fund this habit and to learn about film directing Miller began to work as an actress, and was lucky enough to work with directors Peter Brook, Alan Pacula, Carol Ballard, Maul Mazurski, and Mike Nicols in theatre and film over a period of five years, which she considers a directors apprenticeship. Writing screenplays and stories throughout this period, she wrote and directed her first feature film "Angela" in 1995. "Angela" won the IFP Gotham Prize as well as the Filmmakers Trophy in Sundance. Wishing to continue telling stories somehow and frustrated at not being able to raise money for her films, now the mother of a young child, she turned to writing short stories, publishing "Personal Velocity" in 2001, and subsequently making a film based on three of those stories ("Personal Velocity") which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance as well as the Cassavettes Prize at the Independent Spirit Awards. She then made "The Ballad of Jack and Rose", starring Daniel Day-Lewis, after which she began work on the novel "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee".