Documentarian, Playwright, Author and Poet. An Emmy® award winning documentary maker, Madsen has completed directing “I Know a Woman Like That” which was produced by her Academy® Award nominated daughter Virginia Madsen’s Title IX Productions. The film screened in the 2009 Chicago International Film Festival where Roger Ebert cited it as “transformative and extraordinary”. Madsen’s book of poetry “Crayola Can’t Make These Colors” is now available in book stores and on Amazon. Emmy® winning documentary “Better Than It Has to Be”, about film making in Chicago, aired on both NBC and PBS. Madsen is also the the co-author of “The Texan and Dutch Gas, Kicking Off Europe’s Energy Revolution”, published in the USA and abroad in the Netherlands. She is the mother of actors Virginia and Michael Madsen and their writer/restauranteur sister Cheri.
Photography: Alissa Pagels
Culture / Autumn/Fall 2025
From the archive
Each season, we try to answer a question through art. This time, it is a question of balance— what does grace look like in…
Written by Elaine Madsen
