JILL DALTON is an army brat. She was born in Tokyo, Japan. She attended high school in Germany and lived on army bases throughout the South. Jill has been telling stories and entertaining her friends since she was a kid. Many were tall tales created from her imagination.
After graduating from the University of South Carolina, she became an Artist-in-Residence with the Metropolitan Arts Council in Greenville, SC, where she developed her mime troupe, Homemade Mime. They toured throughout the Southeast and Puerto Rico and received grants from the South Carolina Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.
In 1978, she moved to New York City to follow her dream of being an actress. In 1990 after putting her husband through law school, she found herself forty years old, unemployed, and alone. Her husband deserted her for the twinkling lights of Tinseltown. So she did what any red-blooded American woman would do. She began doing stand-up comedy and, in 1995, won the Mary Joe Comedy Award for best-up-and-coming female stand-up in NYC.
Her stand-up evolved into short solo works she performed around the city, leading to writing and performing full-length solo plays. Her solo play, My Life in the Trenches, was ‘best of the fest’ at the Midtown International Theatre Festival in NYC and was selected to be part of the Kitchen Theatre’s Counter Culture program.
The East Lynne Theatre Company commissioned her to write a solo play about the notorious Lizzie Borden. Lizzie Borden Live! premiered in 2007 in Cape May, NJ, and garnered praise from critics and audiences alike. The play went on to tour AZ, MA, RI, and NYC.
Her plays Collateral Damage and Whistle-blower were semi-finalists in the Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference.
During Covid, six of her short stories were published.
Jill writes about her experiences in showbiz and growing up as an army brat. Two literary agents read one of her stories, “What’s Your Porno Name?” and contacted her about writing a book. She’s writing that memoir now.