Lynn Novick is co-director/producer of The War, an epic seven-part series that tells the story of the Second World War through the personal accounts of nearly 40 men and women from four American towns. The series explores the most intimate human dimensions of the greatest cataclysm in history and demonstrates that in extraordinary times, there are no ordinary lives.

She has been involved in the creation of historical documentaries for more than 20 years. She began her long collaboration with Ken Burns when she joined Florentine Films in 1989, as associate producer for post production on The Civil War series. She then served as producer of the nine-part, 18 hour series, Baseball, the most-watched series in the history of public television, and for which she received an Emmy Award. Following Baseball, Novick and Burns co-directed (and co-produced) the two-part biographical documentary film, Frank Lloyd Wright, which was shown at the Sundance, Telluride, Edinburgh and Seattle Film Festivals and then broadcast on PBS in fall 1998; in 1999 the film received a Peabody Award.

Novick then produced the highly acclaimed 10-part series, Jazz, which explores in detail the culture, politics and dreams that gave birth to jazz music and follows this most American of art forms from its origins in blues and ragtime through swing, bebop and fusion. Jazz premiered on PBS in January 2001 and was nominated for five Emmy Awards.

Novick was born in London in 1962 and grew up in New York City. She graduated magna cum laude from Yale in 1983, with honors in American Studies. After several years as a research assistant at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, Novick began her career in documentary filmmaking as a production assistant at Thirteen/WNET New York. She then served as researcher and associate producer for Bill Moyers on two major PBS series: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth and A World of Ideas with Bill Moyers.