‘The Vagina Monologues’ author to deliver keynote address at Women’s Mental Health Conference

Eve Ensler, a Tony Award-winning playwright and author of “The Vagina Monologues,” will present the keynote address for the Women’s Mental Health Conference at Yale. Her talk, titled “Women: Moving from Surviving to Thriving,” will take place on Friday, Oct. 25 at 10:15 a.m. in Harkness Auditorium of the Yale School of Medicine, 333 Cedar St. It is sponsored by the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism and is free and open to the public.

Ensler, who is also an activist and performer, debuted “The Vagina Monologues” in 1996. Since then, the play has been translated into over 48 languages and performed in over 140 countries. It explores women’s sexuality, sexual violence, and various other topics from the perspective of women from different backgrounds. “The Vagina Monologues” is now frequently performed to benefit V-Day, a non-profit organization that Ensler started in 1998 to raise money and awareness to end violence against women and girls. In 2011, Ensler received the Isabelle Stevenson Award at the Tony Awards in 2011 for her creation of V-Day.

In 2010, she published “I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World,” which became a New York Times bestseller. Her memoir “In the Body of the World” was published in 2013, and adapted for the stage in 2016. She has written 12 plays and 10 books to date.

Ensler is the founder of One Billion Rising, the largest mass action campaign to end gender-based violence. Additionally, she is the co-founder of City of Joy, a community for survivors of gender-based violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. City of Joy was the subject of a 2016 Netflix documentary, which focused on the first class of students there.

The Poynter Fellowship in Journalism was established by Nelson Poynter, who received his master’s degree in 1927 from Yale. The fellowship brings to campus distinguished reporters, editors, and others who have made important contributions to the media. Among recent Poynter fellows are Julia Preston, Adam Sewer, and Jose Antonio Vargas.