I enjoy applying my Investigative skills to researching any story and use my paralegal training to reference and link all sources. I can provide a research outcome on any subject, or historical period, characters, or events, to assist writers and authors. 

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If you would like to discuss a research project please email me here.

 

To understand my current research project, please see GIRL REPORTERS SECRET SPIES.

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To facilitate my adaptation of stories to screen, I studied TV Series Writing at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS). To understand how writers need to be able to interact and engage with Screen production, I also studied Production Budget Fundamentals and Production Accounting Fundamentals at AFTRS. I was accepted by LA Producer Nick Weinstock's international emerging screewnriters group Craft Services which hosted weekly zoom meeting discussions on all facets of the writer in the Screen industry.

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Below is a brief resumee of my past writing work.

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Judith Lanigan's award winning first novel - A True History of the Hula Hoop - was published by Picador in 2009. 

The story revolves around the life and times of a professional international hula hoopist and clown, threaded through with Lanigan's research into the history of the hula hoop and documents her global adventures with The Dying Swan.

 

While researching Newcastle history for the Newcastle Livesites project 'The Samuel Dark Dinner Hour', Lanigan discovered that the Greenhall and Jackson company of 'sideshow attractions' was stranded in Newcastle by WW2. This research informed the novel The Tattooed Lady, and also The Last of the Reckless Jacksons. The Samuel Dark Dinner HOur was a Dinner Cabarate show which sold out the month's season the day after opening.

 

Lanigan has also published The Hula Hoop - The First Compendium or Serious Study of the Subject, including the True History, Illustrated How To Hula Hoop from Beginner to Advanced, Fitness, Bodyfat and the hula hoop, World Records, Amazing Artistes and exceptional stunts and other Miscellania.

 

In 2012 with the assistance of Arts Victoria Lanigan embarked on Travels in CLOWNLAND. This was a travelogue, a journey into the world where clowns live in their many and varied forms, presented to the reader via a series of conversations and experiences exploring the artform which holds up a mirror to the world so that we can laugh at ourselves. The journey is led by the clowns who suggest or dare the next experience or interview. The purpose of 'Clownland' is not only to introduce the reader to the many and varied types of 'clown' and the environments in which they work, but also to collect the philosophy of clowns, and how they deal with life. CLOWNLAND was published in 2016 and reviewed in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald as "a work of admirable daring and spirit." (Fiona Capp) For more information about CLOWNLAND click here.

 

Judith Lanigan has a strong interest in how story strengthens circus. Not simply story with 'beginnning, middle and end - but rather depth of story, I.E. who are the characters involved and how do they interact? 

 

As a dramaturg her skills are about being able to listen, identify the gaps and the questions that need to be asked so that a thorough development of the show happens. As a competent amateur draftperson she can also create visual communications of an idea.