Lynn Novick has been directing and producing landmark documentary films about
American life and culture, history, politics, sports, art, architecture, literature, and music for
more than 30 years. The 92 hours of acclaimed PBS programming she has created in
collaboration with Ken Burns include Ernest Hemingway, The Vietnam War, Baseball, Jazz,
Frank Lloyd Wright, The War, and Prohibition, landmark series that have garnered 19
Emmy nominations. One of the most respected documentary filmmakers and story tellers
in America, Novick herself has received Emmy, Peabody and Alfred I. duPont Columbia
Awards.

College Behind Bars, Novick’s first film as solo director, premiered at the New York Film
Festival and aired on PBS in 2019. Produced by Sarah Botstein, the four-part verité series
explores urgently contemporary and timeless questions – What is prison for? Who in
America has access to educational opportunity? Six years in the making, the series
immerses viewers in the inspiring and transformational journey of a small group of
incarcerated men and women serving time for serious crimes, as they try to earn college
degrees in one of the most rigorous prison education programs in America – the Bard
Prison Initiative (BPI). “What you see in … these heartbreaking, inspiring stories, “ says
Jamil Smith in Rolling Stone, “ is a testament to the power of education, and why it remains
such a dangerous and underrated weapon against a racially and economically unjust status
quo in this nation.”  When Congress voted to restore Pell grants for people in prison at the
end of 2020, reversing a 25 year ban, Ford Foundation President Darren Walker noted,
“this remarkable outcome would  not have been possible without your brilliant and wrenching
film.  This once again demonstrates the power of documentaries to touch hearts and minds, and
ultimately, change policy.”

Along with directing and producing Crime and Punishment in America, Novick is
collaborating with Burns, Botstein and writer Geoffrey C. Ward on a six-hour examination
of America’s response to the Holocaust and a mini-series on the presidency of Lyndon B.
Johnson. She is a magna cum laude graduate of Yale with honors in American Studies, and
lives in New York City.