Becoming a Ballerina

Lise Friedman is the author, in collaboration with photographer Mary Dowdle, of the Junior Library Guild selection Becoming a Ballerina: A Nutcracker Story. She is a former dancer with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and the coauthor of Letters to Juliet, which inspired the 2010 film of the same title. She is also the author of a number of other dance books for young readers. She is an adjunct professor at New York University’s Gallatin School and was editor of the award winning quarterly Dance Ink and the dance writer for Microsoft’s New York Sidewalk, a website focused on arts and culture. Lise lives in New York City.

Mary Dowdle grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. She learned photography from her mother, who chronicled her father’s professional baseball career. Mary studied English literature and photography at Indiana University. In 1995 she moved to NYC and worked with of some of the top advertising/fashion photographers at Stockland Martel. She has spent the last twelve years as a freelance photographer specializing in photographing children, and she collaborated with author Lise Friedman on Break a Leg! The Kids’ Guide to Acting and Stagecraft (a Children’s Book-of-the-Month Club selection), as well as the book Becoming a Ballerina. Mary lives in Boston with her husband and three children.