Denise Nicholas to Receive 2012 Integrity Award at 19th Annual Los Angeles Womens Theatre Festival

March 13, 2012 - PRLog -- Writer-actress-producer Denise Nicholas, author of the award-winning novel Freshwater Road and star of Room 222 and In the Heat of the Night, will receive the 2012 Integrity Award from the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival, announced Adilah Barnes, co-founder of the non-profit organization  which provides  venues for multicultural and multidiscipline solo artists.  The LAWTF Integrity Award is bestowed annually upon an artist who has brought credibility and dignity to her work. Nicholas will accept the 2012 Award at LAWTF’s 19th annual “A Night Divine” Gala on Thursday, March 22 at The Electric Lodge, Venice, CA. Ted Lange and Hattie Winston are co-hosts. For information on the LAWTF gala, please visit: www.lawtf.com or call 818.760.0408.

Nicholas comments:  “Receiving the LAWTF’s l 2012 Integrity Award provides me the opportunity to salute this incredible Los Angeles theatre organization and the excellent work they have done over the past 19 years. I am honored to join previous Award recipients L. Scott Caldwell, Loretta Devine, Dawnn Lewis, Jude Narita, Regina Taylor, Lorraine Toussaint, Carmen Zapata and Freda Payne.”

Nicholas’ semi-autobiographical Freshwater Road, (Simon & Schuster, Pocket Books Division, 2006) is the coming-of-age story of Celeste Tyree, a University of Michigan student who volunteers for the One Man, One Vote drive in Mississippi during 1964’s “Freedom Summer.” The novel received critical praise including a starred review in Publishers Weekly which heralded Nicholas’ novel as “A rich absorbing debut…sometimes gorgeous, sometimes terrifying, the debut of a talented writer” and hailed by The Washington Post as “Superb…a memorable book…it is impossible to praise this book too much…surely the best novel about the Civil Rights Era since ‘The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.’” Newsday called it “A breathtaking debut” and Entertainment Weekly described it as “Hypnotic.” Freshwater Road has been optioned for motion picture development by Scott / Bums Productions and Appledown Films with Nicholas joining them as a producer and screenwriter, adapting her own novel.

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