Author of the book that inspired the film "Three Minutes – A Lengthening".
Glenn Kurtz is the author of Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2014), which was selected as a "Best Book of 2014" by The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, and National Public Radio. The Wall Street Journal praised it as "captivating," and The Los Angeles Times described Three Minutes in Poland as "breathtaking." A Dutch edition appeared in 2015.
Three Minutes-A Lengthening, a documentary film based on Three Minutes in Poland, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2021 and has screened at the Telluride, Toronto, DOC NYC, and Amsterdam IDFA Film Festivals, among others. It is an official selection of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The documentary is directed by Bianca Stigter, co-produced by Academy Award-winner Steve McQueen, and narrated by Helena Bonham Carter. It will have its theatrical release in spring 2022.
Glenn's first book, Practicing: A Musician's Return to Music (Knopf, 2007; Vintage Books, 2008), was hailed by the New York Times as "a thoughtful and fluid meditation" and by Newsday as "the book of a lifetime." Practicing was featured on NPR's "Weekend Edition" with Scott Simon, "To the Best of our Knowledge," WNYC's "Leonard Lopate Show," and elsewhere. Practicing has been translated into Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.
From 2008-2015, he hosted "Conversations on Practice," about the writing process and the writer's life. Guests included Patti Smith, Jennifer Eagan, Martin Amis, Adam Gopnik, and many others.
He is a graduate of the New England Conservatory-Tufts University double degree program and holds a PhD from Stanford University in German studies and comparative literature. He has taught at Stanford University, San Francisco State University, California College of the Arts, and is currently on the faculty of The Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University.
A 2016-2017 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow and a 2019-2021 Presidential Fellow at Chapman University, in Orange County, CA, Glenn has appeared as a guest speaker across the U.S. and internationally. He lives in New York City.
Photo by Franziska Liepe
