Judith Wynn Rousuck ’69

2025 Laurel School Alumna Lifetime Achievement Recipient

Theater Critic and Author

After transferring to Laurel in Eleventh Grade and serving in her Senior year as the editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, Judy Rousuck '69 recognized that she could combine her love for storytelling and journalism. She pursued both her interests as an English major at Wellesley College, where she won a major poetry prize and served as editor-in-chief of The Wellesley News.

After graduating from Wellesley, Judy returned to Cleveland for a job editing the program guide for WCLV, the fine arts radio station where she had completed her Laurel Senior Project. She then went on to work for The Cleveland Press and earn a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. Judy then landed at The Baltimore Sun, where she spent the next 33 years, 23 of them as a theater critic; she was a fixture in the Baltimore theater scene as one of the country’s most highly respected theater critics.

Living an ethos to educate and encourage the next generation of writers, Judy has taught theater and writing at Goucher College, at the O’Neill Theater Center, at the National Endowment for the Arts Journalism Institute in Theater at the University of Southern California, and in a talented youth program at Johns Hopkins University.

Judy’s second act emerged 18 years ago when she left The Sun and found a new home at WYPR, Baltimore’s National Public Radio station, where she provides weekly critiques of area theater productions. Over the years, her short stories, articles and commentary have been published in magazines ranging from American Theatre to Dog World. Her debut novel, Please Write: A Novel in Letters, which tells its story through correspondence between two literate terriers and their very human grandmother, recently received the Dog Writers Association of America’s Best Novel award.

In recognition of the role Laurel played in building Judy’s strong foundation in writing and critical thinking, her mother established the Judith Wynn Rousuck Journalism Award, which is given annually to an Upper School student.