Tina McKenna

In 1973, Tina McKenna was perched on top of the world as she stood on the stage of The Kennedy Center and Helen Hayes presented her with the Irene Ryan Award as the best college actress in America...ten minutes later, there was an announcement that she was disqualified for going over the time limit by 14 seconds!

Thus began a circuitous series of detours that brought her to writing and story-telling.

She arrived in New York to attend Juilliard in 1974. After finishing, she became a private caterer, bartender, clothing designer, an undercover agent for a restaurant chain, worked on Wall Street and edited financial publications for the Euromoney Institutional Investor franchise.

That last job, for which she had woefully unqualified, began as a temporary 2-month fill-in for someone on maternity leave, which then somehow stretched into 30 years.

Fired in 2017 for aging out just as she was finishing up a round of radiation, and not willing to take up knitting, Canasta or gardening, she began to write.

Then, on a dare by a colleague, she got up on a Moth stage in 2018 and told her first story. Hooked, she began to haunt Moth stages in New York, eventually winning 8 slams.

Tina has been featured on GRIT: True Stories That Matter. In 2021, she ventured into the The 90-Second Slam, winning her first time out. A month later, she won the GrandSLAM...and then retired!

Tina lives in Poughkeepsie with her actor husband Noble Shropshire (yes, that's his real name), an achingly adorable 5 lb chorkie Petey and a massive Siberian Forest Cat, Harry Purrsey (HotzPurr.)

Her hobby is desperately seeking relevancy.

There are second acts.