L.A. Storyteller

Playwright and television writer Julia Cho talks about her craft, the mysteries of Los Angeles and her latest project for HBO.

story by MONICA Y. HONG
photographs by JENNIE WARREN

Julia Cho may be an award-winning playwright (The Language Archive, The Piano Teacher, Durango), but she is no stranger to TV, having written for HBO’s Big Love and Fox’s Fringe. Now, she’s been tapped to pen and serve as co-executive producer for a potential new HBO series based on the critically-acclaimed novel The Madonnas of Echo Park by Brando Skyhorse.  Despite being under deadline, Cho took time out to speak to KoreAm about her latest project, how she feels about adapting a Mexican American male novelist’s work, and why she thinks Los Angeles is a series of hidden doors.

What did you think when you first read the book, The Madonnas of Echo Park?

I loved the book. It was one of those things where I picked it up and I couldn’t put it down. I just think it was beautifully written, and the world is really vivid and the characters are very real.

It sounds like a lot of work just to develop a show—to come up with the treatment, the arc, the characters, the pilot … Continue Reading »

Photo via New York Times

Award-winning playwright Julia Cho will write a new series for HBO based on the novel The Madonnas of Echo Park, according to Deadline.com.

Cho will also serve as an executive producer for the series, which examines different lives in a Los Angeles neighborhood built by Latinos but increasingly being gentrified by hipsters.

Cho worked previously for HBO as a writer for long-running series Big Love as well as Fox’s Fringe. The Los Angeles native won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2009 for her play The Language Archive.

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