Meet Our Authors
Vishesh Abeyratne
Vishesh Abeyratne is a playwright and dramaturg who divides his time between Ottawa, Ontario and Montreal, Quebec. He graduated from Concordia University with a B.F.A in Playwriting. He currently works as the Literary Manager for Teesri Duniya Theatre where he coordinates the Fireworks Playwrights' Mentorship Program. Exposure is his first published work. Deanna Alisa Ableser
Deanna Alisa Ableser is a theatre teacher at Dana Middle School in Hawthorne, California. Deanna was the recipient of the 2006 VSA Playwright Discovery Teacher Award and was honored at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. She has a Masters of Fine Arts in Theatre and a Masters in Education from the University of Southern California. She has been teaching and directing award-winning youth theatre for the past twelve years. Deanna believes that theatre allows children to play, create, explore, and discover the amazing spirit and passion that resides within them. Nicole B. Adkins
Nicole B. Adkins has taught classes and workshops to students of various ages at theatres, K-12 schools, and universities. Her plays have been performed at Children's Theatre of Charlotte, Hollins University, Mill Mountain Theatre, Studio Roanoke, Creative Drama Children's Theatre (Winston-Salem, NC), SkyPilot Theatre (Los Angeles), the American International School (Guanghzou, China), and other theatres, schools and museums nationally and abroad. She has ten plays published through YouthPLAYS, where she also serves as Artistic Associate. She collaborated with Matt Omasta of Utah State University on a book entitled Playwriting and Young Audiences: Collected Wisdom and Practical Advice from the Field (Intellect Press, 2017). National playwriting awards include the Waldo M. and Grace C. Bonderman Award and recognition in the Beverly Hills Theatre Guild Marilyn Hall competition. A Hollins Children's Literature MFA graduate and Playwright's Lab Core Faculty member, Nicole is also a member of the Dramatists Guild and TYA/USA.
Anthony Aguilar
Anthony Aguilar (he/him) is a playwright, actor and teaching artist who was raised in Boyle Heights, California. His fairy tale, punk-rock musical, Little Red is published through YouthPLAYS and is the winner of the Distinguished Play Award from the American Alliance for Theatre & Education (AATE). He is also the creator of El Verde, a series of plays about a Mexican immigrant factory worker turned superhero. He is also the co-writer for the romantic comedy podcast series, Love and Noraebang, presented by Sonoro Media and the Mash-Up Americans and was nominated for Podcast of the Year 2023 by iHeart Radio. As a teaching artist, he has taught for organizations like Inner-City Arts, California State University, Northridge and Disney on Broadway.
Lindz Amer
Lindz Amer makes queer stuff for kids and kids at heart. They created their award-winning LGBTQ+ family web series Queer Kid Stuff in 2016! They are the author of the nonfiction parenting book Rainbow Parenting: Your Guide to Raising Queer Kids and Their Allies (St. Martin's Press) and the picture book Hooray for She, He, Ze, and They! What Are YOUR Pronouns Today? (Simon & Schuster). Currently, they perform at schools and libraries across the country, while writing and consulting for mainstream children's television. They worked with Nick Jr. on the Webby award-winning Blue's Clues & You "Pride Parade" music video, wrote for The Fabulous Show with Fay and Fluffy, created the first nonbinary character in the Paw Patrol universe on the spin-off Rubble & Crew and more! You can watch their viral TED Talk on why kids need to learn about gender and sexuality and learn more about their work over at queerkidstuff.com.
Nushin Arbabzadah
Born and raised in Afghanistan, Nushin Arbabzadah became a war refugee as a teenager. She completed high school in Germany and subsequently received postgraduate degrees in Linguistics and Literature from Hamburg University in Germany and Middle Eastern Studies from Cambridge University in the UK, where she was a W. H. Gates Scholar. Prior to becoming a playwright, Nushin published political commentary, academic articles and literary translations. Nushin's first play, Afghan Girls Don't Cry, had a staged reading in London as part of Kali Theatre's War Plays festival. Her second play is called Dust Allergy, and was commissioned by Palindrome Productions as part of the Sahar Speaks: Voices of Women from Afghanistan series. Nushin's first play for children is called Spinning, a play that she most enjoyed writing. Brian Armstrong
Brian Armstrong is a writer, a teacher and a proud father. He received his MA in Script Writing from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London and has had several plays produced for the stage in the US and England. Brian has also published a book of poetry. He was a member of the Old Pueblo Playwrights in Tucson, Arizona. He now resides in the UK.
Sandra Fenichel Asher
Sandra Fenichel Asher's plays have been produced nationally and abroad; over two dozen have been published, including A Woman Called Truth, In the Garden of the Selfish Giant, and Jesse and Grace: A Best Friends Story, all winners of the AATE Distinguished Play Award. Sandy is a recipient of a NEA fellowship grant in playwriting, the NETC's Aurand Harris Award, AATE's Charlotte Chorpenning Award for a distinguished body of work in children's theatre, and Aurand Harris Fellowship and Founders' Development grants from the Children's Theatre Foundation of America. Her work was selected for the Kennedy Center's New Visions/New Voices Symposium, the IRT/Bonderman National Playwriting Symposium, and NYU's New Plays for Young Audiences. Founder of American Theatre for the Very Young: A Digital Festival, Sandy has also published nearly 30 books for young readers. Six of her plays appear in Tell Your Story: The Plays and Playwriting of Sandra Fenichel Asher. Celeste Barnaby
Celeste Barnaby was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and currently attends college at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where she is pursuing degrees in Film Studies and Computer Science. Her plays have received accolades from Writopia Lab, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and the Northern Nevada Regional Theatre Conference. In addition to plays, she also writes short stories, screenplays, and maybe the occasional poem. She is a staff writer for The Prospect, an online college admissions magazine, and one of her articles has been syndicated on the Huffington Post. Her dream job is to write for television, though really she would be happy with almost any job where she can pay the rent by writing. Oscar T. Basulto
Oscar T. Basulto is an educator and theatre artist who has written and performed in several plays at CASA 0101, Company of Angels, Off The Tracks and Grupo de Teatro Sinergia. Credits include El Verde, Their Eyes Saw Rain, Leaving and Los Vendidos. Allan Bates
Allan Bates, the author of three successfully produced full-length children’s plays and one yet-to-be produced, has forty years’ experience as a playwright. For twenty-five years he directed the Creative Writing program at Northeastern Illinois University. He taught playwriting at Victory Gardens Theatre and was Playwright-in-Residence at Raven Theatre, both leading Chicago theatres. He has authored more than thirty full-length and one-act plays produced throughout Chicago, as well as in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere. His plays have won Bailiwick Theatre’s annual new play award, an Illinois Arts Council $1000 Excellence Award, and acceptance at the University of Michigan Experimental Theatre Festival. Two of his plays have been translated and produced in foreign languages. Recently he has branched out into new directions, including screenwriting and directing a Shakespeare workshop at the Federal Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. He is a current member of The Dramatists Guild and The Playwrights Center.
Evan Baughfman
Evan Baughfman is a Southern California playwright, author and educator. He is a playwriting member of PlayGround-L.A. and is a company member with Force of Nature Productions. A number of Evan’s plays are published through YouthPLAYS, Heuer Publishing, Next Stage Press and Drama Notebook. Evan has also found success writing horror fiction, his work found recently in anthologies by Graveside Press, Inkd Publishing and No Bad Books Press. Evan’s own books include The Emaciated Man and Other Terrifying Tales from Poe Middle School, Vanishing of the 7th Grade, Bad for Your Teeth and Try Not to Die in a Dark Fairy Tale.
Andrew Beattie
Andrew Beattie has directed a number of school productions including John Mortimer's A Voyage Round My Father, Alan Ayckbourn's Ernie's Incredible Illucinations and Tom Stoppard's Doggs Hamlet, Cahoots Macbeth. He has also directed a production of James and the Giant Peach at the Edinburgh Fringe. In addition to his titles with YouthPLAYS, his published plays include Arthur: Boy King of Britain (Lazybee Scripts), which is a telling of the traditional story of Arthur, Merlin and the Sword in the Stone, along with original works such as Dramatic Licence and Ordinary Jack (both Playstage YA); these have been performed by schools and youth theatre groups in the UK, the United States and Australia. His play Brief Lives won the Scottish Community Drama Association's award for new writing for youth theatre; the play was subsequently performed at the E15 Acting School in East London in a production directed by the actress Alison Steadman. He is also the author of two middle grade novels for children set in medieval England, The Secret in the Tower and The Angel Player (both Sweet Cherry Publishing).
Kaci Beeler
Kaci Beeler is a visual artist, improviser, writer, and stage and film actor based out of Austin, TX. She has been performing improvisational theatre since 2002 and is a company member with several award-winning ensembles including Parallelogramophonograph and Available Cupholders. In addition to her acting work, Kaci has created, directed, and produced dozens of improvised and devised shows in Austin and has won several Austin Critics Table and Austin Chronicle "Best of Austin" Awards. She has presented original productions at Austin's internationally renowned Fusebox Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and has toured to over 75 cities and nine countries to perform and teach others how to improvise full-length plays on the spot. Her work has been published in several anthologies and periodicals including the Austin Chronicle, Saveur Magazine, and Time Out New York. Dan Berkowitz
Dan Berkowitz is a past Chair of The Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights, and is the former Los Angeles Regional Rep of The Dramatists Guild of America, the professional association of playwrights, composers, and lyricists. His writing for the stage has been produced off-Broadway, in major regional theatres, in college and amateur theatres throughout the United States, and in Canada. He is the author of four optioned screenplays, and was principal scriptwriter for The Movie Channel's hosted format with Robert Osborne. A former Senior Story Analyst for RHI Entertainment, a division of Hallmark, Dan is a consultant for stage, film, and television scripts. In addition to writing, Dan has produced and/or directed, scores of plays, musicals, and cabaret revues, as well as several seasons of syndicated television programming, and a raft of commercials and industrial and educational videos.
Gary L. Blackwood
Though he's best known as an author of novels and nonfiction books (The Shakespeare Stealer series, The Year of the Hangman and Second Sight, Bucket's List), Gary L. Blackwood has also penned a dozen stage plays for youth and adults. Dark Horse won the Ferndale (CA) Repertory Theatre's competition; The Count of One was winner of the Festival of Firsts in Carmel, CA; Fateville took top prize at the Dayton FutureFest. His stage adaptation of The Shakespeare Stealer has been produced by most of the top children's theatres in the States.
Cris Eli Blak
Cris Eli Blak is a playwright whose work has garnered him recognition from The Negro Ensemble Company, Kairos Italy Theater, Austin Film Festival, Barrington Stage Company, TEDxBroadway and Ignition Arts. His work has been performed around the world, from Off-Broadway to London, Canada and Ireland. He is the recipient of the Emerging Playwrights Fellowship from The Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre and a selected participant of The Kennedy Center Playwrights Intensive. He was a resident playwright with Fosters Theatrical Artists Residency, Paterson Performing Arts Development Council and La Lengua Teatro en Español/AlterTheater Ensemble; the recipient of the Michael Bradford Residency from Quick Silver Theatre Company; in the inaugural class of fellows for the Black Theatre Coalition/Broadway Across America; and shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Theatre Prize. Sierra Blanco
Sierra Blanco won Stephen Sondheim's National Young Playwrights Competition, Writopia's Worldwide Plays Competition, and the NYC Write A Play! Competition and was twice an invited Guest Playwright to the Eugene O'Neill's Young Playwrights Festival at the National Theater Institute. She was awarded the Fine Arts Award in Playwriting from Interlochen and received Michael Perelstein's Discover Your Passion Scholarship for Playwriting and Musical Theater Composition. Sierra was a Finalist for both the Blank Theater Competition and Andrew Lloyd Weber's Training Scholarship. Sierra's poetry was published in The New York Times, and her play Bang! was published in A Decade of Shared Stories. Sierra won Scholastic Art and Writing Awards in multiple years for playwriting, poetry, and fiction. She has had three professionally staged Off-Broadway productions of her work and three staged readings. Sierra also writes and composes musicals. She is a winner of the National Endowment for the Arts/American Theatre Wing 2020 Musical Theater Songwriting Challenge. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, AEA, MENSA, and a BMI Artist for songwriting. Robin Blasberg
Robin Blasberg loves a good laugh. Her comedic plays have been performed all around the mulberry bush. In addition to The Mother Goose News Hour, her YouthPLAYS scripts include Cake for the Queen and The Wizard of Oz horror parody, A Taste of Oz. Her full-length holiday play, The Christmas Crisis, and her wildly popular female empowerment play, Snow White and the Seven Entrepreneurs, as well as The Halloween Surprise, The Music of Love and The Lost Letters of Mother Goose are all available through Drama Notebook. If that isn't enough, her writing can be found in Short Edition online and in well-known children's magazines like Highlights High Five and Ladybug. She is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and was awarded SCBWI's Jack Reid Author Scholarship. Will Boersma
Will Boersma received his BFA in Playwriting and Creative Writing from DePaul University and a Master of Arts in Teaching degree from National Louis University. Will's adaptation of O. Henry's "The Ransom of Red Chief," Two Desperate Men, was a finalist in the Art of Adaptation Festival at CityLit Theatre in Chicago in 2019. He is a two-time runner-up in the 2011 and 2013 YouthPLAYS New Voices One-Act Play Competition for Young Playwrights. His plays Animals and The Boys, The Bed, and The Balsa are published with YouthPLAYS; The Art of Parenting with the literary journal Crook and Folly at DePaul University; and A Golfing Anniversary with the online literary magazine Outrageous Fortune at Mary Baldwin College. Will's plays have been produced, performed, published and/or received staged-readings around the world in 17 states, 5 countries and 4 continents. Will thanks his family and friends for their support.
Tim Bohn
In addition to writing novels, stories, and plays, Tim Bohn enjoys teaching, cooking, and puttering in the garden. He is an enormous nerd and really likes to play online games and board games. He lives with his wife (Lisa) and two children (Eli and Wyatt) in Chapel Hill, NC.
John Bolen
John Bolen is a novelist/playwright/actor living in Southern California. He has been published by Applause Theatre & Cinema Books (Hal Leonard Publishing), Independentplay(w)rights, Indigo Rising, Scars Publications, The Write Place at the Write Time, OC180news, Eunoia Review and YouthPLAYS. John is the Producing Artistic Director of the New Voices Playwrights Theatre & Workshop. His plays have been produced in theatres throughout the U.S. including New Jersey Repertory; Stages Theatre (CA); Chance Theater (CA); Cabrillo Playhouse (CA); Theatre@First (MA); NewGate Theatre (RI); Newport Theatre Arts Center (CA); Thalian Hall Studio Center (NC); Costa Mesa Playhouse (CA); Secret Rose Theatre (CA); The Asylum Theatre (CA); Lincoln Square Theatre (Chicago, IL); Malibu Stage Company (CA); Vanguard Theatre (CA); Garden Grove Playhouse (CA); Red Room Theatre (NYC; Gallery Theatre (CA); and the Empire Theatre (CA). Shoshannah Boray
Shoshannah Boray has been working as a playwright for over 20 years. She is interested in finding what brings her characters through heartache to a place of courage, and through the doubt and confusion of life's choices to a place of strength. Shoshannah writes plays for adults, teens and youth. Her work has been produced and staged in professional theatres nationwide, including Escaping Warsaw (Sage Theatre Company, NYC; Sefira Jewish Theatre, Los Angeles; UVM's Royal Tyler Theatre, VT); Water People (Maryland One-Act Festival, Best Original Script; Growling Pup Festival, VT); Mensch (JET Festival of New Plays, Detroit); Laughing Under the Sea (Flynn NASA Grant, Finalist Princess Grace Awards); Coyote Dreams (Clauder Competition State Winner); Witches' Brew (Shoestring Theatre, VT); Mandolin (Mae West Fest, WA; Love Creek Productions, NYC). The Adventures of Fiddlehead and her youth play series have been produced in Vermont schools. MFA, Carnegie Mellon. Andy Boyd
Andy Boyd is a playwright, cartoonist and songwriter based in Brooklyn, New York. Some of her other plays include Occupy Prescott and Three Scenes in the Life of a Trotskyist. Kate Brennan
Kate Brennan has penned six musicals including The Infinity Trilogy, recipient of a MAP Fund Grant. Her first book, elevated thoughts, was released with Literati Press and her Brennan & White musical ALiEN8 is available with YouthPLAYS. She also created Clean Slate and Illuminate with David Lee White. Her other musicals include Some Assembly Required, ELFuego and The Lost Boys. Her play What's in Store was a semi-finalist for The O'Neill and a finalist for The Princess Grace/New Dramatists Fellowship. Her writing has appeared in McSweeney's ("21 best of '21"), The Dramatist, Howlround and The New York Times. She is a member of The Dramatists Guild, AEA and VASTA. Kate holds an MFA from The University of Virginia and is Artistic Director of Ignition Arts.
Nancy Brewka-Clark
Nancy Brewka-Clark began her writing career by covering Boston theater for many newspapers and magazines, interviewing luminaries such as legendary queen of the Yiddish theater Molly Picon, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Jane Powell, Leonard Nimoy, Sandy Dennis, Robert Brustein and Israel Horovitz. Her plays have been produced in venues as varied as Brooklyn, New York and Harrogate, England. Her comic monologues have been published by Smith and Kraus, and a short comedy Buddha Pest is included in their 2021 anthology Laughter Is the Best Medicine. Kenyon Brown
Kenyon Brown is an award-winning playwright whose productions include Pillow Fight; Notification; All A-Twitter; In View of; Goodbye, Room; and The Roof Needs Replacing. He has been produced in SF, NYC, and LA as well as internationally. Several of his plays for young actors and audiences are available from YouthPLAYS: All-A-Twitter; Goodbye, Room; Hi, We Thought You Were Dead; My Big Adele Moment; The Zombie Effect; and Annatude. Hi, We Thought You Were Dead and My Big Adele Moment also appear in Middle Schoolin’ It: Fifteen Short Plays for Middle School Actors, which is also available at YouthPLAYS. His professional theatre experience includes working at Circle Repertory Company in NYC. He was awarded the Hopwood Award for Drama from the University of Michigan. He is a member of The Playwrights' Center, The Dramatists Guild of America, Inc., Theatre Communications Group, and The Writer's Center of Indiana.
Rachel Bublitz
Rachel Bublitz is known for telling stories about women, and creating exciting new work for young performers. She received the Glickman Award for best premiere play in the San Francisco Bay Area for the Z Space premiere of Ripped. Her work has also received a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere. In addition to her titles at YouthPLAYS, her work is also published with Playscripts (Biz Town and Ghost House), Dramatic Publishing (The Night Witches), Stage Partners (Of Serpents & Sea Spray and The Book Women), Pioneer Drama Service (Cheerleaders VS. Aliens), and Brooklyn Publishers (Blood & Sequins). Additional awards include the Shubert Fendrich Memorial Playwriting Contest and PlayGround's June Anne Baker Prize. Rachel lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she's the Egyptian YouTheatre's Resident Playwright. She spends weekends watching her kids dominate at water polo.
Matt Buchanan
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Matt Buchanan is a New England-based professional playwright, composer and director specializing in theatre with and for young people. His more than two dozen published plays and musicals have been performed across the United States and on every continent but Antarctica. He has directed more than one hundred productions with young casts and is the author of Directing Kids: A Comprehensive How-To Manual for Directors of Plays and Musicals with Casts of Young People from a Veteran Drama Teacher and Director, published by YouthPLAYS. He is also an accomplished musician and multi-instrumentalist. Matt has a BA in Music from Harvard College and an MFA in Child Drama from the University of Texas at Austin.
Samuel Buggeln
Samuel Buggeln is the founding artistic director of Ithaca's Cherry Arts, an award-winning theatre translator and one of the US's preeminent directors of new international plays. For the Cherry, Sam has commissioned and/or produced over twenty full productions, almost all world or English-language premieres. Pre-Cherry, Sam directed numerous productions at regional theaters and extensively off- and off-off-Broadway. In NYC, his production Go-Go Kitty, GO! won Best Play at FringeNYC from among two hundred productions in that festival, and he developed countless other new plays at organizations including the Lark, NYTW, Atlantic Theater Company, Clubbed Thumb and others. For two decades, he was an Artistic Associate at NYC's Ohio and New Ohio Theatre, where he directed the Drama Desk-nominated Cressida Among the Greeks and adapted novels by Queneau and Duras. His theatre translations have gone on to productions in NYC and California and been published by Oberon, Seagull and The Mercurian. A collection of international plays premiered by The Cherry Arts is forthcoming from Methuen Drama.
Diana Burbano
Diana Burbano, a Colombian immigrant, is an Equity actor, a playwright, and a teaching artist at South Coast Repertory and Breath of Fire Latina Theatre Ensemble. Diana's plays focus on female protagonists. Plays include Policarpa, Fabulous Monsters, Enemy|Flint and Caliban's Island. Linda (in English and in Spanish) has been seen all over the world. Her play Ghosts of Bogota recently won the nuVoices Festival at Actor's Theatre of Charlotte. Ghosts...was produced by Alter Theater in the Bay Area. She was in Center Theatre Group's Writers' Workshop cohort. As an actor, Diana recently played Amalia in Jose Cruz Gonzales' American Mariachi at South Coast Repertory.
B.J. Burton
B.J. Burton is the author of several full-length plays including Lobelia Lodge, For The Record, Hunting Season, Room For Love and Maddie on Her Way Home. Her plays have been produced and/or developed at InterAct Theatre Company, Hedgerow Theatre, Widener University, Players Club of Swarthmore, Manhattan Theatre Source, Pittsburgh New Works Festival, Six Women Playwriting Festival, the Brick Playhouse and others. Honors include two fellowships from PA Council on the Arts and winner of the PA Playwriting Award. Her work was designated a finalist for the Heideman Award, a semifinalist in the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, a semifinalist in the Nicholl Fellowships and a finalist twice for the Set in Philadelphia Screenwriting Competition. She is the author of The Philadelphia Connection: Conversations with Playwrights, a book of interviews with several Philadelphia-area playwrights, including Bruce Graham, Michael Hollinger and Ed Shockley. She received her BA in Theatre from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and continued with post-graduate work at UCLA Extension Writers' Program, American Conservatory Theatre and Villanova University. She received her MFA at Rosemont College.
Roger Butterley
Maura Campbell
Maura Campbell is a playwright, screenwriter and director whose work has been produced all over the U.S. and abroad. Playwriting awards The Song of Bernadette Jones, (2018 Semi-finalist, O'Neill Playwright's Conference and Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and 2017 Finalist for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, Region IV. Other awards include Radar Range, semi-finalist for The Garry Marshall New Play Festival, 2017 Semi-Finalist for the McNerny Playwriting Prize, and Seagull Invasion, finalist for The Getchell Award. Upcoming productions include The Song of Bernadette Jones (Fresh Fruit Festival, NYC 2018). Recent productions include The Song of Bernadette Jones (Hollins-Mill Mountain Festival of New Works, January 2018), Dreamtime (Maitland Rep, Maitland, Australia), Seagull Invasion (2017 Edinburgh Fringe Festival), Southern Flight (2017 Page to Stage, Roanoke, VA) and Flower Duet (2014 Road Theatre, LA). Campbell is founder of Fugitive Sister Productions, creating feminist fueled stories for the stage and screen. Ruth Cantrell
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Ruth Cantrell is an award-winning playwright. Her scripts have been produced in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany and throughout the United States. The Stonecutter received "Best Children's Play" from the Southwest Theatre Association. Ruth received her BA and MFA from Trinity University. She was recipient of the state of New Mexico's highest arts award, the Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts. She was awarded the American Alliance for Theatre and Education's (AATE) Special Recognition Award. She is a member of Actors' Equity Association. Ruth is Emerita Professor of Theatre Arts at New Mexico State University and the founding director of the Children's Theatre Workshop. Maryann Carolan
Maryann Carolan is a playwright, screenwriter, designer and teacher. She is the Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Fourteen out of Ten Productions, whose mission is to combine the vitality of students with the experience of professionals in a collaborative theatrical environment. Her work for the stage includes: Love (Awkwardly) (Winner - Audience Favorite Award at Manhattan Theatre Source & Nominated for 6 MSU Theatre Night Awards), Storage, Something About Friendship, Teacher of the Year, and The Boarding House. Maryann received a Writing & Philosophy Fellowship from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland and was a finalist in the Hanger Theatre's Playwriting Lab Residency. José Casas
José Casas is a Playwright and Associate Professor at the University of Michigan. He has a BA in Theatre Arts from the University of California, Santa Barbara, a MA in Theatre Arts from California State University, Los Angeles, and a MFA in Playwriting from Arizona State. His plays include the vine, la ofrenda, somebody's children and Flint. His work has been included in a number of anthologies such as The Bully Plays, Ethnodrama: An Anthology of Reality Theatre and Theatre for Youth II: More Plays With Mature Themes. His published work includes la ofrenda, 14, somebody's children and Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences, which was awarded the American Alliance of Theatre and Education's Distinguished Book Award. His plays la ofrenda and somebody's children were awarded both the Bonderman National Playwriting Award and the American Alliance of Theatre and Education's Distinguished Play Award. Catherine Castellani
Catherine Castellani is a playwright/novelist at work on her second fantasy novel and a new comedy for the stage. Her plays include The Red Flags (AACT NewPlayFest Winner), Level Up (Valdez Theatre Conference PlayLab), The Bigsley Project, In Search of Lost Time (Valdez Theatre Conference PlayLab), 2Y20M (HB Studio Residency, Nora Salon), Possession (Finalist, Marion International Fellowship). Her 10-minute plays have been produced nationwide, including at The Public Theater (NY), Actors Theatre of Louisville, City Theatre (Miami), and The ArtsCenter (Carrboro), and published by Applause Books in 2016 The Best Ten Minute Plays (WORK). Catherine is a two-time Fellow of MacDowell, and one-time Ucross Foundation resident as a playwright. She studied at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts Experimental Theater Wing (New York and Paris programs) and is a member of The Dramatists Guild. As a novelist: Futurescapes 2023 and 2022; Viable Paradise 2023. She lives in NYC.
Angela Cerrito
Angela Cerrito is an author and a playwright whose work focuses on issues of identity. Her novel, The Safest Lie, was named a best book by The Guardian and a Notable Social Studies Book for Young Readers. Her plays have been produced in the US and Europe. The short plays Someone Sends Flowers and Just in Case are part of #CodeRed Playwrights' collections about gun violence in schools. Her play When Guys Talk, was produced off-Broadway in a collection of #MeToo plays. A Chill in My Bones has been produced in Kaiserslautern, Germany, and Chicago, IL. Angela was the Assistant International Advisor for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) for over 10 years. In addition to writing, she enjoys speaking to students in person or via live video connection from home. She recently presented on the topics of novel revision, literacy, and playwriting at the Asian Festival of Children's Content in Singapore.
Marty Chandler
Marty Chandler is a playwright, performer and collaborative theatremaker originally from the suburbs of Seattle. He is a senior at Yale University, where he is a double major in Theatre Studies and Psychology. His work often falls at the intersection of these two majors, drawing upon these interests to portray and explore the human experience. As an improviser and comedian, and as a Filipino and queer artist, he finds himself bringing light and humor to unique and previously unseen stories, emotions, and ideas. His past works, including his play Schema, have been produced and performed at Yale, and his play A Butterfly in a Barbershop was selected for the Yale Playwrights Festival. Marty also has served as a member of the Orchard Project Core Company, where he collaborated with professional playwrights and devised theatre ensembles, in addition to developing his own projects. Emily Cicchini
Emily Cicchini writes material for stage, film and interactive media, most notably Becoming Brontë and Mays & Terese. Her work has been honored with the Austin Critics' Table Award for Best Original New Script, the B. Iden Payne Award for Outstanding Original Script, and by the Children's Foundation of America. As resident playwright since the company's inception, the Pollyanna Theatre Company has premiered many of her original plays for young audiences, including Edward, The Owl, and The Calico Cat, A Christmas Rose, Community Helpers on Wheels, A Dragon's Happy Day, Duckie Sees The World, Just Bee, and the Pattern Nation series. She edited the 4 volume Mother/Daughter Monologues series for the International Centre for Women Playwrights. Cicchini holds an MFA in playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin where she was a James A. Michener Fellow, and a BFA in acting from DePaul/Goodman School of Drama.
Eric Coble
Eric Coble was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and raised on the Navajo and Ute reservations in New Mexico and Colorado. His scripts have been produced on Broadway (Tony- and Pulitzer-nominated The Velocity of Autumn), Off-Broadway (Bright Ideas), in all fifty states of the U.S., and on several continents. His plays for young audiences include award-winning adaptations of Lois Lowry’s The Giver and Gathering Blue, Sherlock Holmes: The Baker Street Irregulars, The Storm In The Barn, and have been produced throughout the U.S. and internationally including in Disney World (Jedi Training: Trial of the Temple), as well as The Kennedy Center, Arena Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival, Habima Theatre (Israel) and Pentacion Productions (Spain). Thirty-three of his scripts have been published, and awards include three AATE Distinguished Play Awards, the Chorpenning Playwriting Award for Body of Work, the Cleveland Arts Prize and the National Theatre Conference Playwriting Award. Will Coleman
Benjamin Connor
Benjamin Connor is a playwright from Wilmington, Delaware. His plays include The Monty Hall Problem, Mortals and Waiting For The Bus. Ben's work has been produced and developed by Wichita State University and Brown University Motion Pictures, and his work with YouthPLAYS has been performed in 10 states, 4 countries, and 2 languages. Ben is the translator of two musical comedies for the Moliere Award-nominated writing team Vidal and Salvia. Ben is also an actor and director, having performed with the Brown University Theatre Department, the Colonial Playhouse, the Arden Shakespeare Guild and the Delaware Shakespeare Festival. In addition, Ben writes for the satire website Broadway Beat.
Meredith Dayna Cope-Levy
Meredith Dayna Cope-Levy writes plays rooted in lived experience and emotional truth, and aims to make space through her work for dynamic, challenging women. Her plays Decision Height, Coupler and She Made Space have all received awards and commendations from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, and been produced across the country. Smart Kid is her first play for young audiences. She received her B.A. in theatre from Hollins University, and her M.F.A. in Playwriting from the Hollins Playwright's Lab in 2018. She is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild. Hal Corley
Hal Corley has developed his plays with major US regional theaters, and two, An Ounce of Prevention and Finding Donis Anne, have been widely performed (Seattle Repertory Theatre, Syracuse Stage, the Walnut Street Theatre, and in NYC, Atlanta, LA, Boston and Charlotte). Three full-length scripts, Mama and Jack Carew, ODD, and Easter Monday, are published by Samuel French. His work has been excerpted and anthologized in French's Exceptional Monologues 2, S&K's Best Stage Scenes of 2008 and Best Men's/Women's Stage Scenes and Monologues of 2011. His Treed is published by Playscripts in Great Short Plays Volume 10, his Dolor is published in Applause's Best American Short Plays, 2014-2015, and over 30 of his other one-acts have been produced in 18 states and Canada. He recently won HRC Showcase and Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation awards for his play, Married North, and has three times been a semifinalist in the O'Neill Competition. Hal is a member of the Dramatists Guild. Mark J. Costello
Mark J. Costello is a professional playwright and teacher based in Philadelphia. He is an MFA candidate in playwriting at Temple University and is a proud graduate of the Foundry, a Philadelphia emerging playwright collective. Nationally, his plays have been presented by theatres in Texas, West Virginia, New Jersey, and Maryland, and he has developed work with Write Now! and the Great Plains Theatre Conference. Closer to home, he has had a number of plays produced through different groups and festivals, such as PTC@Play, Juniper Productions, the Pittsburgh New Works Festival, the White Mountains Project, and Villanova Theatre. Read more at www.markjohncostello.com. Inda Craig-Galvan
Inda Craig-Galván is a Chicago native, living in Los Angeles. MFA, Dramatic Writing, University of Southern California. Her plays have been developed and read at theatres including Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, Oregon Shakespeare Festival Black Swan Lab, Skylight Theatre, Intiman Theatre, Playwrights' Arena New Pages Lab, and others. Awards include The Kennedy Center Rosa Parks Playwriting Award, Jane Chambers Student Playwriting Award, WomenWorks, and Black & Latino Playwrights Conference winner. Inda is one of five playwrights selected for the 2017-18 Humanitas Play LA Workshop. She is a member of the Playwrights Union, a network of LA theatre artists writing for stage, TV, and film. Her play Black Super Hero Magic Mama is on the Kilroys List.
Bill D'Agostino
Bill D'Agostino's plays for young audiences include
the Toyland Mysteries series, My Very Own Polar Bear, Zuzz the Alien Needs Your Help! (co-created by Amanda Coffin), Sleeping Handsome (Act II Playhouse in Ambler, PA); Imaginary, Teen Sherlock, Fairy Tale High School and Robin Hood (Montgomery Theater in Souderton, PA); and Making Gnocchi with Grandma, which was named a semifinalist in the Write Now competition. Bill received his MA in Theatre from Villanova University, and his bachelor's degree in theatre from Brown University. Brian Daly
Brian Daly wrote Caveman Dave and Big and Hairy, two middle grade novels. He also wrote the screenplay adaptation of Big and Hairy for a Showtime Original cable feature (same title) starring Richard Thomas. Brian lives with his wife, Laurel Daly, in Portland, Maine. Their daughters, Hannah Daly and Nora Daly, are actresses.
Stacy Davidowitz
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Stacy Davidowitz is a NYC-based writer. She is the author of two middle grade novel series for Abrams Books: Camp Rolling Hills and Hanazuki (Hasbro). As a playwright, Stacy has had work developed and produced in NYC, Chicago, Boston, Portland, LA, Tucson, and London. Her plays include The Rubber Room (The Old Vic, London; Naked Angels Theater Company), Pink! (7 New York Innovative Theatre Nominations; Lark Finalist), Sacred Water (Rag and Bone Theater Company; Fundamental Theater Project), and Miracle Village (Shakespeare's Sister Semifinalist; Leah Ryan FEWW Finalist). Her co-written musicals include Hank & Gretchen (produced in schools regionally), Camp Rolling Hills (NYMF), and One Day (Big Block Entertainment). As a teaching artist, Stacy has taught in over 30 public schools, private schools, and camps. She is a graduate of British American Drama Academy; BS, Tufts University; MFA in Acting, Columbia University.
Steph DeFerie
Steph DeFerie grew up on Cape Cod and lives there still. The many terrific hours she has spent performing and studying at the Harwich Junior Theatre make up the majority of her theatrical training, and she continues to perform there to this day. Although she also writes for adults, for 12 years, she worked with the Chatham Middle School Drama Club because she loves introducing kids to the fun of performing. Her favorite part of writing for young audiences is incorporating audience participation into her work. She has published 20 scripts, which have received countless productions in this country and abroad and won several awards. Two of her plays comprised the inaugural season of the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre's W.H.A.T. For Kids series. Her most popular works include Once Upon A Wolf, Mother Goose Is Eaten by Werewolves, I Hate Shakespeare! and Nick Tickle, Fairy Tale Detective.
Kemuel DeMoville
Kemuel DeMoville is an award-winning playwright whose work has been produced somewhere in the world every year since 2005. Recently his work was performed at The Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles, and various plays he has written were the recipients of the Residents Prize, and Hawaii Prize from Kumu Kahua Theatre. He was awarded the Milken Prize for Playwriting in 2017. He is an Aurand Harris Fellow by designation of the CTFA. He has an MFA in playwriting from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and his MA in syncretic theatre is from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. His work has been published by YouthPLAYS, Heuer Publishing, The Kenyon Review, Cirque, Spider Magazine and and is included in 222 MORE Comedy Monologues, an anthology from Smith and Kraus Publishers. Hillary DePiano
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Hillary DePiano is a playwright, fiction and non-fiction author best known for fantastically funny fairy tales, surprisingly sweet slapstick and unrelentingly upbeat writing advice. With over two dozen plays for everyone from pre-schoolers and up, she’s been honored to have her work performed in schools and theatres around the world. A consummate cheerleader for writers at every experience level, Hillary teaches a variety of workshops and writing classes on everything from storycraft to marketing and beyond. She also teaches eBay, e-commerce and selling online under the name T. W. Seller (TheWhineSeller.com). For more information about her books, plays, and blogs or for the schedule of upcoming events and workshops, visit her website.
Ashley P. DiLorenzo
Ashley P. DiLorenzo is a graduate of Northeastern University with a degree in Media & Screen Studies and Theatre. She is also a member of the Huntington 100. Born and raised in Queens, NY, she attended Frank Sinatra School of the Arts High School. This is also where she discovered her love for playwriting and began her songwriting endeavors. Some of her plays (Hopefully: An Ethnodrama, Someone Should've Told Me) have gone on to succeed in festivals and/or receive professional staged readings with TDF. She also won the National Endowment for the Arts and American Theatre Wing's 2021 Musical Theatre Songwriting Challenge for her work on "Birdy-lingo." An original musical she co-wrote, A Stormy Night, received its off-Broadway debut at the Emerging Artists Theatre Festival. Hayley May Ditcham
Hayley May Ditcham holds a Masters of Writing for Performance from the Victorian College of the Arts. Published plays include Warriors, Friday Magic, Log Off and A Thousand Words. Hayley's works have been produced by Baggage Productions, Peridot Theatre, Brighton Theatre, Dramatic Pause Theatre, Gasworks Arts Park, the MC Showroom, the Butterfly Club, and many schools in the U.S. In 2017-2018 she was a participant in the Melbourne Theatre Company, Frankston Arts Centre NEON Hatch Masterclass and Further Project Development Program. From 2018-2019, Hayley was the Playwright in Residence at Billilla Mansion, and is the current recipient of the Wheelers Centre Hot Desk Playwright Fellowship.
Kristen Doherty
Kristen Doherty is a nine-time published and internationally produced South Australian playwright who specializes in theatre for young people. She has been a writer, director, theatre-maker and drama teacher for more than twenty years. Over the past three years, there have been more than five hundred productions of her plays in schools and theatre companies all over the world, across five continents, as well as every state of Australia. Kristen’s plays are used in curriculums and learning resources in schools across the world, and Bully! is used in a number of schools anti-bullying programs. Many of Kristen’s plays have competed in the UIL One Act Play Competitions in America and have gone on to win multiple awards. Also a screenwriter, Kristen’s TV series, Queer Tas, is in development with Matthewswood Productions. She is also contracted as head writer on a series of fable-inspired screenplays for an animation series, for a Canadian production company, and is collaborating on her heart-piece, Push, a play inspired by the historical gangs of Sydney.
Noelle Donfeld
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Noelle Donfeld, lyricist, bookwriter and composer, has had twelve musicals, including three commissions, produced in the last ten years in Chicago, Ft. Worth, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, London, Dayton (OH) and Birmingham (AL). Her most recent production, Mita the Magnificent!, toured for a year with the Walnut Street Theatre, reaching 8,700 students in three states. Other productions include Carjacked at the 10 by 10 at the Triangle of the Arts Center (Carrboro, NC); The Spark, Hannah Senesh at Theatre Building Chicago; The Revolution of Betsy Loring at Casa Manana (Ft. Worth, TX) and Encore Theater (Dayton, OH); Squeak! at the La Canada Theatre; Ghost-s, at the Lyric Theatre (Los Angeles) and at Stages 2012 (Lonny Chapman Theatre), Powder Puff Pilots for University of Irvine, Stages 2012 and HiTech High (North Hollywood, CA). Miss Vulcan 1939 was produced three separate years at Red Mountain Theatre (Birmingham), at Actors Co-op in Hollywood and at White Sage Theatre (Winnemucca, NV), and PURITANICAL! Coffins of the Mayflower was produced at DOMA Theatre (Hollywood), the Malibu Playhouse and NoHo Arts Center. A member of the Dramatists Guild, the Academy for New Musical Theatre, ASCAP and the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights (ALAP), she is a triple semi-finalist of the Eugene O'Neill Musical Theatre Project, and a finalist at Stages in Chicago. Paul Doniger
Paul E. Doniger, actor, director, playwright, composer and retired teacher at Pomperaug High School was a founding member of CSC Repertory Theatre in NYC, where he was a leading actor and Board of Directors member. Doniger holds an MA in English from WCSU. He’s published in ATEG Journal and English Journal, and contributed to Grammar Alive: A Guide for Teachers. He appeared as Toby Belch in Twelfth Night (Shakespeare Ventures) and as Prospero in The Tempest at The Town Players Newtown. He performed in the series, Turn Up The Volume! at Seven Angels Theatre and is a member of the Working Actors Collective. His plays include Masks (YouthPLAYS), Cassandra and Ubu, The Conqueror. He’s the author of one-act plays What The Dickens! (Tom Stoppard Award) and Passive Resistance. He participated in the Playwriting Workshop at Theatre Works before relocating to New York in 2022. His 10-minute play, Prom Date, was accepted for TW's 10-minute play festival.
Jonathan Dorf
Jonathan Dorf is a Los Angeles-based playwright, screenwriter, teacher and script consultant whose plays have been produced in every US state, as well as in Canada, Central and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. He is chair emeritus of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights and for many years served as resident playwriting expert for The Writers Store and Final Draft, Inc. He directed the theatre program at The Haverford School and spent three years at Choate Rosemary Hall Summer Arts Conservatory as playwright-in-residence. A frequent guest artist at Thespian conferences and schools, he has served as Visiting Professor of Theatre in the MFA Playwriting and Children's Literature programs at Hollins University, and as United States cultural envoy to Barbados. He holds a BA in Dramatic Writing and Literature from Harvard College and an MFA in Playwriting from UCLA. He is a member of the Teaching Artist Alliance, The Dramatists Guild (where he's on the Education Committee) and the Philadelphia Dramatists Center (of which he is the former managing director), and he is co-founder and managing partner of YouthPLAYS.
Joël Doty
Joël Doty is a member of the Dramatists Guild. Her most produced play, Action and Reaction, has been produced in such places as Los Angeles, New York, and Sydney Australia. Her screenplay, The Flower and the Weed, has won several contests for family films. Her novel, The Good Citizen, has also won awards for YA fiction. Furry Tales is her first play for children, inspired by working as a volunteer in children's community theatre productions. Her goal is to write plays for children to perform which are fun for them and full of comedy and nuance for the audiences (usually their parents!) Elizabeth Doyle
Elizabeth Doyle wears several hats: composer, lyricist, singer, pianist, arranger and music director. Her single songs have been featured in New York ASCAP new music programs, Minneapolis' Cafe Latte Da, in the Chicago Humanities Festival, Death: The Musical in Houston (TX) and at various Chicago venues such as Park West, Maxim's, Victory Gardens and Preston Bradley in the Cultural Center. Her chamber music was performed at the Paradiso in Amsterdam. Some of her other musicals include Fat Tuesday, Alice In Analysis, The Virginian, The White City and Duo, performed at the famed Steppenwolf Theatre. A featured singer/pianist on Marian McPartland's NPR program Piano Jazz, Doyle was a magnet for many years at Chicago's famed Pump Room and has performed throughout the United States and Europe. She has two CDs available, Elizabeth Doyle and Time Flies.
Kitty Dubin
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Kitty Dubin is a widely produced playwright whose productions include Mirrors, The Last Resort, Ties That Bind, Change Of Life, The Day We Met, Dance Like No One's Watching, Coming Of Age and The Blank Page. Her most recent play, The Marriage Spectrum, received a virtual reading during the pandemic that was sponsored by Oakland University. Her work has appeared in theaters throughout Michigan as well as New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Austin (TX). One acts including Tough As Nails, Mimi And Me, Blockbuster, The Prom Dress, Mystical Body, Bye Bye Love, Skin Deep, Strictly Personal, The Joy Of Sex, The Other Side and Boob Job have been performed in numerous festivals and competitions. Kitty was awarded two individual artist grants in playwriting from the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affair and has been teaching beginning and advanced classes in playwriting at Oakland University (Rochester, MI) for the past twenty-six years. Katherine Dubois
Katherine Dubois has had sixty of her plays (ten-minute, one-act and full-length) presented to the public in 170 readings and productions in school, community, professional and online venues. Nine of her plays for young young actors have been published.
Sierra DuCharme-Hansen
Sierra DuCharme-Hansen is an LA-based comedy writer who is currently writing for the daily comedy YouTube show, Good Mythical Morning. Past theatrical writing credits include Stuck, performed at the Wasatch Page to Stage Festival, The Rental, which won Best Student Production at the Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival, Alone with Char performed at the Westminster One Act Festival, Most Likely to Kill and Al Dente, both of which were performed at the Sun Prairie Performing Arts Center. Al Dente won YouthPLAYS's New Voices Playwriting Competition. Kelly DuMar
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Kelly DuMar is an award-winning playwright, creative arts workshop facilitator and author of a non-fiction book for parents, Before You Forget - The Wisdom of Writing Diaries for your Children. Kelly's plays have been produced around the US and in Canada, and her award winning one-act plays and monologues have been published by a variety of publishers. Kelly is past president of Playwrights' Platform, Boston, and she founded and produces the annual Our Voices Festival of Boston area women playwrights held at Wellesley College, now in its 9th year. Her first poetry chapbook, All These Cures, won the Lit House Press Poetry Award and was published in 2014. Kelly received her Master's Degree in Education from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education and her BA in English with Honors from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Kelly is a member of the Dramatists Guild, a certified psychodramatist and Fellow in the American Society for Group Psychotherapy. She's on the Advisory Circle of the International Women's Writing Guild where she's a faculty member of their annual conference. Kelly has presented professional workshops at the New England Theatre Conference, The Boston Book Festival, Mass. Poetry, Playback North America, Te International Women's Writing Guild, The National Association for Poetry Therapy & The Transformative Language Arts Conference. She lives in the woods on the Charles River with her husband and children.
Brooklyn Durs
Brooklyn Durs is an actor and aspiring playwright from Louisville, Kentucky. Brooklyn is working to achieve her BFA in Acting at The Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago. Her performing background includes many classical Shakespeare roles including playing Henry V in Henry V and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. She has also been challenged by playing Guildenstern in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard. Her passion for playwriting began with a class in high school where her first play Nun of Your Business was produced in her school's New Works Festival. Her play Eight Minutes, Twenty Seconds won the YouthPlays New Voices One-Act Competition in 2020. In 2022, her play Mustangs earned a semifinalist nod in The Blank Theatre's Young Playwrights Festival. Brooklyn is dedicated to playing in, writing, and producing meaningful art and hopes to reach audiences with worthwhile messages with the intent to promote positive change. Wysteria Edwards
Wysteria Edwards is a playwright and educator from Washington State. She holds a BA in Elementary Education (K–8) and Drama (4–12) from Whitworth College and an Ed.M in Reading and Literacy from Washington State University. After more than twenty-five years in theatre she debuted as a playwright with Broken Thread in Chicago where she served as Resident Playwright and Literary Manager for UrbanTheater Company. She has adapted works for the stage with HarperCollins Publishing, Simon & Schuster and Penguin, including The Disappeared, Belle Prater’s Boy, Dovey Coe and the catalog of Don Freeman picture books. The Disappeared received an Off-Broadway reading and a full workshop at Noah Wyle’s The Blank Theater in Los Angeles. Wysteria is also the author of Waiting for Mister Rogers: Teaching with Attachment, Attunement and Intention, for which she was granted access to the personal papers of Fred Rogers and the founder of Simple & Deep™ and Red Cardigan Kids™.
Julia Edwards
Julia Edwards is an LA-based playwright, children's author and illustrator, and teacher. Her plays—some of which include Family Planning, The Rats Are Getting Bigger, The Ravaging and Lockdown—have been seen at The Public Theatre (NYC), the LAByrinth Theatre (NYC), The Flea (NYC), South Coast Repertory Theatre (Costa Mesa), Chalk Repertory Company (LA), Circle X (LA) and Salvage Vanguard Theatre (Austin) among others. Family Planning, produced in LA-area residential homes, won the LA Ovation Award for Best Production. She is a member of the Playwrights Union of LA. Annie Harrison Elliott
Ramón Esquivel
Ramón Esquivel is a playwright, director, scholar, and educator who has worked in K-12 schools, universities, and non-profit theatres and arts organizations. His play, ZEQ, was awarded a 2021 ReImagine Grant from Write Now, TYA/USA, and the Children’s Theatre Foundation of America. Published plays include Dulce, The Hero Twins: Blood Race, Luna, Nasty, and Nocturnal, and his work is featured in the anthologies Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences, New Visions/New Voices: 25 Years/25 Plays and I Have a Story: Plays from an Extraordinary Year. Directing credits include The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical (Tracz, Rokick); Somewhere: A Primer for the End of Days (Orta); Sometimes the Rain, Sometimes the Sea (Izumi); Chatroom (Walsh), and The Transition of Doodle Pequeño (Dean). Ramón is currently Assistant Professor of Theatre -Playwriting at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Mark T Evans
Mark T Evans is a composer and musical director from Long Island and Philadelphia. Other than Hank & Gretchen, Mark has written music for I Am Jim Thompson and Big Star California (EAT/Notes on a Page), Buddy Holly at the Armory (Prospect Theater Co.), King of Ghosts (Missing Bolts Prod./Philly Fringe) and Summit Ave (Figment Festival/Governor's Island), all with Zac Kline and Eric Kubo. Notable projects as a musical director include The Judy Holliday Story (NY Fringe; NJ Rep) and The 10th Floor (NYMF/ATA Chernuchin). Mark also works as the director of the Marsh & McLennan Corporate Chorale. He has won the ASCAP Frederick Loewe Award for Emerging Musical Theatre Composer, and was a Barrymore Award co-Nominee for his contributions to the original score of Grease and Desist (BRAT Productions). Mark received his BA in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and his MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from the NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Kitty Felde
Kitty Felde is an award-winning playwright, podcaster, and veteran public radio journalist. Her first novel, Welcome to Washington, Fina Mendoza, published in 2019, is a middle-grade mystery set on Capitol Hill. The podcast version THE FINA MENDOZA MYSTERIES premiered in October. Her newest play, Queen of the Water Lilies, is a Larry Neal Award finalist. A public reading was staged at Kenilworth National Park & Aquatic Gardens in Washington, DC. Kitty worked with Arena Stage dramaturg Jocelyn Clarke on her LA Riots drama Western & 96th, with readings at Spooky Action Theater, Theater Alliance, and the Kennedy Center's Page to Stage Festival. It's a semi-finalist for the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference. Her musical Bum's Rush tells the tale of how Los Angeles nearly said "no" to the Dodgers. Kitty's one-woman-show-with-a-ghost play Alice, an evening with the tart-tongued daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, was named "Critic's Pick" by The Washington Post. Quentin, Kitty's other Roosevelt play, performs every weekend near the White House. Kitty co-founded LA's Theatre of NOTE and led the playwriting program at the HOLA Youth Theatre. She is host and creator of the Book Club for Kids podcast. Quetzal Flores
Quetzal Flores is a composer, producer, father and artivist (artist activist) from East Los Angeles with over 20 years of proactive experience in using music as an essential element in the transformation of communities. Since 1993, he has been the musical director for the Grammy Award-winning East Los Angeles rock group, Quetzal. As a composer and musical director, Flores has arranged and performed for various theatre productions including La Victima with the Latino Theater Company, By the Hand of the Father, They Shoot Mexicans, Don't They? and Evangeline the Queen of Make Believe with About Productions, The Ballad of Ricardo Flores Magon with Ruben Martinez and The Ballad of George Zimmerman, written by Dan O'Brian and produced by The New Blackfest. Steve Flowers
Steve Flowers is a middle school general music teacher from the northwest suburbs of Chicago, IL. His two published musicals and two short plays have received performances in Illinois, California, Wisconsin, Texas and North Carolina. Steve also wrote a jazz band chart titled Trick Shot, which is published by Barnhouse Publishers and was performed at the Illinois Music Education Association Jazz Festival. When not teaching, writing, or composing, Steve enjoys playing playing keyboards in a rock band with friends. Steve received the Who's Who Among America's Teachers Award, The Village of Mount Prospect Shining Star Champion For Youth Award and he holds a Bachelor's Degree in Music Education from the University of Illinois and a Master's Degree from Olivet Nazarene University (Bourbonnais, IL). Judy Freed
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Judy Freed has seen her plays and musicals performed in London, Seoul, New York, Chicago, California, Washington, Massachusetts, and throughout the Midwest. Her writing has been recognized by such organizations as the National Music Theater Conference and the American Alliance for Theatre & Education. Musicals include Sleepy Hollow (developed at the ASCAP/Disney Musical Theater Workshop), Emma & Company (named a BackStage "theatrical highlight of the year"), Through the Door (world premiere: Seoul, South Korea), Mom! The Musical (winner of the Chameleon Theatre Circle New Plays Competition), and Somebody Else's Troubles (featuring the songs of Grammy-winner Steve Goodman). Four of her plays for young readers have been published by Pearson Scott Foresman. She is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America. Anne G'Fellers-Mason
Anne G'Fellers-Mason holds an undergraduate degree in theatre and history from Mars Hill University, a Masters in history from East Tennessee State University, and is pursuing a Masters in Fine Arts in playwriting from Hollins University. Her one-act, The War to End All Wars, received a staged reading at Mars Hill University. Another one-act, While Sitting in the Park Today, made it into the semi-finals of the National One-Act Play competition. Anne works for the Town of Jonesborough, Tennessee, at the McKinney Center where she creates original, historical pieces about the history all around her. Her cemetery play, A Spot on the Hill, entertains audience members in the Old Jonesborough Cemetery during the cooler months. When she’s not writing plays, Anne’s busy working on one of her many novels in progress. Jeremy Gable
Jeremy Gable is a playwright in Philadelphia. He was a finalist for both the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and the Terrence McNally New Play Award, a semi-finalist for PlayPenn, and a nominee for the National New Play Network’s Smith Prize for Political Theater. He was a Core Playwright with InterAct Theatre Company, and a proud alumni of The Foundry: An Emerging Philadelphia Playwrights Lab. In town, his plays have been seen at Philadelphia Theatre Company, InterAct, and Theatre Exile. Elsewhere, his work has been presented in Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Beirut, and Twitter.
Patrick Gabridge
Patrick Gabridge writes plays, novels, screenplays, and radio plays. His stage plays include Lab Rats, Distant Neighbors, Blood on the Snow, and Reading the Mind of God, and dozens of short plays which have been staged in theatres around the world. His novels are Steering to Freedom, Moving (a life in boxes) and Tornado Siren. He co-founded Boston's Rhombus playwright's group, the publication Market InSight... for Playwrights, and the on-line Playwrights' Submission Binge. In addition to YouthPLAYS, his plays are published by Playscripts, Brooklyn Publishers, Heuer, Smith & Kraus and Original Works Publishers. He's been a fellow with New Rep and with the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston and is the co-founder and past coordinator of the New England New Play Alliance. He is the producing artistic director of Plays in Place, which specializes in creating site-specific plays in partnership with museums, historic sites, and other institutions. In his spare time, he likes to farm and fix up old houses. Fengar Gael
Fengar Gael has had workshops and/or productions at The New York Stage and Film Company, the Sundance Playwrights Lab, the Utah Shakespearean Festival, the InterAct Theatre of Philadelphia, New Jersey Repertory, Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, the Salt Lake Acting Company, Moxie Theatre, Kitchen Dog Theatre, the Athena Project, Detroit Repertory, the Landing Theatre of Houston, and in New York City: MultiStages, Urban Stages, The Secret Theatre, The Spiral Theatre, CAP 21, Turn to Flesh Productions,
Project Y Theatre, Yonder Window Theatre, and Playwrights Gallery. She is a recipient of the Craig Noel Award (for Devil Dog Six), the Playwrights First Award (for Opaline), Manhattan Theatre Works Award (for The Drapers Eye); and commissions from South Coast Repertory, New Jersey Repertory, the InterAct Theatre, The Hangar Theatre, and
a fellowship from the California Arts Council. Most recently, the Detroit Repertory Theatre produced The House on Poe Street, and the TRU Voices Reading Series featured Passing Parades on June 17, 2019. Andrew Geha
Andrew Geha is an award-winning playwright and theater teacher. He has worked at Friends Academy, a Quaker school in Locust Valley, NY, since 2001. Monsters!, a comedy about surviving middle school, won AATE's 2025 Playwrights in Our Schools residency. In Dreams, I Am Invincible, a play about bullying, won the New England Theatre Conference’s Aurand Harris Memorial Playwriting Award. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Acting and a Master's Degree in Educational Theater, both from New York University. His work has been produced internationally, including a five-star production of We Didn’t Have Time to Be Scared at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. His first novel, The Most Incredible Mission Berg, will be published by PeachTree in the summer of 2027.
Amy Gentry
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Amy Gentry is a writer living in Austin, Texas. As a sketch comedian, she has performed in Austin Sketchfest, the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival, and the Encyclopedia Show. Her freelance writing can be found in the Chicago Tribune, Austin Chronicle, LA Review of Books, xoJane, The Hairpin, and others. She holds a PhD in English. Robert George
Robert George is an actor and writer, living in Los Angeles, California. He graduated from UCLA's School of Theater, Film, and Television in 2008, and has worked with Los Angeles based theatre companies such as The Open Fist Theatre Company, Los Angeles Theatre Ensemble, Los Angeles Theater Initiative, and The Groundlings. A graduate of the Groundlings School of Improv, he currently teaches acting technique and comedy improv at The Young Actors Studio. Sara Glancy
Sara Glancy is an actor/playwright currently pursuing a BFA in drama at TISCH School for the Arts. As a playwright, Sara has been recognized both locally and nationally. In 2008, her play The Cheshire Smile received a staged reading at Baltimore’s CENTERSTAGE as part of their Young Playwright’s Festival. This play then went on to become a finalist in the Young Playwrights, Inc. national playwriting competition and received an off-Broadway staged reading at the Cherry Lane Studio Theatre in 2010. She thanks her family and friends for their constant support of all her crazy artistic endeavors.
Daniel Glenn
Daniel Glenn is an educator and theatre artist who received his MFA in Theatre from Sarah Lawrence College, where he won the Stanley and Evelyn Lipkin Prize for Playwriting. He received his bachelor's in Dramatic Literature summa cum laude from NYU. Daniel has taught high school English and Drama, winning awards both for his teaching and his stage productions. He is the author and illustrator of John and Gladys and The Year the World Began, available on Amazon. He was an associate artist in residence at Atlantic Center for the Arts with Heather Woodbury, and performed his full-length solo play, My Date With Troy Davis, at the New York International Fringe Festival, earning glowing reviews from Backstage and NYTheatre.com. His play swingset/moon was featured at the Telluride Playwrights Festival. Other one acts and full-lengths have been produced across the country.
Megan Gogerty
Megan Gogerty is a playwright and comedian. Her play Bad Panda (Theatre Without Borders, Beijing; Iron Crow Theatre Co.; WordBRIDGE Boomerang Playwright honoree) was published by Original Works Publishing. Megan's musical drama Love Jerry was produced in the New York Musical Theatre Festival where it won multiple awards including three Talkin' Broadway Citations and four NYMF Excellence Awards including Excellence in Writing (Book). Her ten-minute play Rumple Schmumple (Dramatic Pub.) was a Kennedy Center/National ACTF honoree. Other plays include Lady Macbeth and Her Pal, Megan, Housebroken, and Save Me, Dolly Parton. Her musical tribute album to the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer is widely available online. Megan was a Playwrights' Center Jerome Fellow, a WordBRIDGE alum, and she earned her MFA in Playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin. She currently teaches playwriting at the University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop and is a core faculty member of the Playwrights Lab at Hollins University.
Adam J. Goldberg
Adam J. Goldberg is a comic, performance poet, playwright, and reporter. When he's not writing, performing, or comicking, he loves watching 50s movies about dangerous teenagers.
Kit Goldstein Grant
Kit Goldstein Grant is a New York City based musical theatre composer, lyricist, librettist, and teaching artist. She is a graduate of Union College, has studied at Juilliard and the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Writing Workshop, and is a member of the Dramatists Guild and a founding member of NYC's Composers Collective. Her musicals for young audiences include King Midas; The Mermaid of Edam;and It's Raining Tamales!, a prize winner in the Jackie White Memorial National Children's Play Writing Contest and finalist in the Mountain Playhouse International Playwriting Contest. Her musicals for adults include an adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' The Black Tulip and black comedy The Wrong Box, finalist for London's Burbage Productions New Writing Prize. Studio cast recordings of It's Raining Tamales! and The Wrong Box are available on iTunes and Amazon.
Franky D. Gonzalez
Franky D. Gonzalez is a playwright and TV writer of Colombian descent based in Dallas, Texas. Franky was a recipient of the Charles Rowan Beye New Play Commission and co-recipient of the MetLife Nuestras Voces Latino Playwriting Award. He won the Crossroads Project Diverse Voices Playwriting Initiative Award, the Short+Sweet Theatre Festival Manila Best Overall Production Prize and was a staff writer for the fourth season of 13 Reasons Why. His work has been read or seen at The Lark, Sundance Institute, Goodman Theatre, the Latinx Playwrights Circle, the National Winter Playwrights Retreat, NNPN, New Harmony Project, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Repertorio Español, LAByrinth Theater Company, Dallas Theater Center, Austin Latinx New Play Festival, Stages Repertory Theatre, Ammunition Theatre Company and Kitchen Dog Theater, among others. Previously, Franky served proudly as a Dramatists Guild Regional Representative. Currently, he is the 4Seasons Resident Playwright. Jeff Goode
Jeff Goode is an actor, director, screenwriter and author of over 50 plays and musicals, including THE EIGHT: Reindeer Monologues, Rumpelstiltskin, The Ubu Plays and Princess Gray and the Black & White Knights. Jeff is the creator of Disney's American Dragon: Jake Long, an animated series which first aired on the Disney Channel. He is the founder of SkyPilot Theatre Company's Playwrights Wing and currently a visiting professor of playwriting for Hollins University's innovative Playwrights Lab. You can follow his misadventures on the internet at: www.jeffgoode.com.
Don Goodrum
A stage veteran of almost 50 years, Don Goodrum was born in Tennessee and raised in Mississippi, where he got his first taste of the spotlight as The King of the Calendar in his second grade play. Don moved onto the church play circuit and managed to turn a Best Actor win in a One Act Play Festival into a theatre scholarship to Mississippi College. At MC, Don began writing in earnest and saw several of his plays produced. After college, Don wound up married and on the radio, a career choice that kept sharpening his comedic and writing skills for the next 32 years. Don retired from radio in 2006 and began teaching high school theatre and writing once again. He has seen productions of many of his plays throughout the US and hopes to see many more. He is retired and lives in Florida where he dotes over three grown daughters, three granddaughters and a grandson.
Idris Goodwin
Idris Goodwin is an award winning interdisciplinary writer. Currently serving as Artistic Director of Seattle Children’s Theater, Idris writes, directs, programs and /or produces relevant content for intergenerational audiences. Goodwin is the author of over 60 dynamic and diverse original plays, such as How We Got On, Hype Man: A Break Beat Play, The Boy Who Kissed The Sky and the ground-breaking Free Play: open source scripts for an antiracist tomorrow. Committed to access and impact, Goodwin's work is widely produced across the country by professional, community and academic institutions alike. His storytelling prowess extends to creating original content for Nickelodeon, HBO Def Poetry, Wondery and more. His first picture book, Your House is Not Just A House, is forthcoming on Clarion/Harper Collins 2024. As Board President of Theater For Young Audiences/USA, Goodwin champions the essential role of the performing arts in society. You can hear Idris weekly on the Break Beat Week Podcast, where he summarizes the top stories in hip hop form. Neeley Gossett
Neeley Gossett holds an MFA from The Playwright's Lab at Hollins University, and her works have previously received productions and readings at The Alliance Theatre, Lark Play Development Center, Manhattan Repertory Theatre, Onstage Atlanta, The Coastal Empire New Play Festival, The Great Plains Theatre Conference, Mill Mountain Theater, Riverside Theatre, Studio Roanoke, The Ethel Woolson Lab, One Minute Play Festival Atlanta, and Big Dawg Theater. Her play, Carolina Dive, is published by YouthPLAYS and was produced in Australia. She is currently a teaching artist at The Alliance Theatre and is the resident dramaturg for The Ethel Woolson Lab. She was named a finalist in the Kendeda National Graduate Playwright Competition and received The Reiser Artist Lab award from The Alliance Theatre. Neeley co-founded Found Stages Theatre, where her immersive play, Beulah Creek, premiered. Jared Goudsmit
Jared Goudsmit is a playwright and filmmaker from St. Louis, MO. He's a three-time winner at the Blank Theatre's Young Playwrights Festival, has been staged twice in the ITF Next Generation Works program and is a YoungArts Winner and Finalist in Film. His movies have screened at over 70 festivals. He graduated from Tulane University with majors in Theatre and Political Science. His stage works include Wild West comedy Derailed, goofy sci-fi The Plunger of Truth and short-form musical Wrath of the PTA, which he co-wrote with composer Max Reinert. He also constructs crossword puzzles for The New York Times, LA Times, Universal and more! He wishes you a wonderful day. Eislinn Gracen
Eislinn Gracen is a Florida-based actor, artist and writer. She was selected as one of the seven playwrights for the inaugural #Enough: Plays to End Gun Violence initiative, in which her piece, Guns in Dragonland, was initially workshopped and produced as a virtual staged reading as the headliner for Beth Marshall Presents' New Works Series. She was a participant and winner in the first Be Original playwriting festival, hosted by New Generation Theatrical and Dr. Phillips Performing Arts Center. Eislinn was also the recipient of the Florida Theatrical Association Award, which performed her play Wolf in a Concrete Jungle as a table read at the festival and also as a staged reading at the University of Central Florida. Diane Grant
Diane Grant is an award winning playwright and screenwriter, whose film Too Much Oregano, won the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize. Ms. Grant was co-founder of the first professional women's theater in Canada. Her plays, produced and published in the US, Canada, Italy, the British Virgin Islands, and Hong Kong, include Sunday Dinner, Nellie! How The Women Won The Vote, Sex and Violence, Has Anybody Here Seen Roy? Rondo a la Condo, A Dog's Life; The Last Of The Daytons, and The Piaggi Suite. Will To Win, a documentary on the Southern California Shakespeare Festival for high school students, written by Ms. Grant, and produced by Kerry Feltham, previewed at the Folger Shakespeare Library, and is recommended by the Royal Shakespeare Company of London. Brandon Grayson
Brandon Scott Grayson is a New York-based composer, lyricist, music director and orchestrator for the theatre. His work has been heard in a variety of places such as the Utah Shakespeare Festival, Creede Repertory Theatre, the Neil Simon Festival and Southern Utah University. His major compositional works include Pizza Boy for Off the Cuff Comedy, Best Foot Forward for Creede Repertory Theatre, As You Like It for the Utah Shakespeare Festival, Minutes: A Song Cycle for SUU Second Studio and Heart of the West for the Lake Powell Playhouse. In addition to his compositional work, Brandon has served as a music director, arranger and orchestrator for multiple productions at the organizations listed above. He also served as the Resident Music Director and Accompanist for Southern Utah University's Department of Theatre Arts and Dance from 2018-2019. Brandon is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild. Joanne Greene
Joanne Greene is a graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina with a degree in Voice Performance. She has a Masters in Fine Arts with a concentration in Screenwriting from the University of Georgia. She taught drama for 23 years in Columbia County Schools in Evans, Georgia. During that time, she produced and directed hundreds of plays and musicals. After she retired from full-time teaching, she begin working at Warren Road Elementary in Richmond County, Georgia in the Arts Infusion program teaching drama. During the summers she taught music and drama for The Art Factory in Augusta, Georgia. Her short plays Wait! and Nothing Ever Really Changes were featured in Augusta's Le Chat Noir Theatre's Quickies. She is also active in the community as a soloist and stage and film actress.
Stephen Gregg
Stephen Gregg's play, This is a Test, helped define a genre of one-acts when it appeared in 1988, and it continues to be one of the most-produced one-acts in the country. Since then, he has published over thirty plays for secondary schools to perform, including Small Actors, Why We Like Love Stories, One Lane Bridge, The New Margo, S.P.A.R., Twitch and Wake-Up Call. His play Crush appeared on the mainstage of the International Thespian Festival in 2016, and Trap was the closing night play for Festival 2018. He's a member of the Writers Guild of America West, the Dramatists Guild and Lab Twenty6 Writers group. He lives with his husband Todd in Venice Beach, CA. Awards include: MacDowell Colony, Inge Fellowship, Educational Theatre Association's Founders Award for Service to Youth and Theatre. Actors Theatre of Louisville's Heideman Award for Best 10-Minute Play (A Private Moment, co-winner with Lynn Nottage). D.W. Gregory
D.W. Gregory is best known for Radium Girls, an historical drama about dial painters poisoned on the job in the 1920s. With more than 2,000 productions throughout the U.S. and abroad, Radium Girls has been named among the Ten Most Produced Plays in American High School Theatre by Dramatics magazine. Other plays include Memoirs of a Forgotten Man, which received a National New Play Network rolling world premiere (Contemporary American Theater Festival, Shadowland Stages, New Jersey Rep); Molumby's Million (Iron Age Theatre), nominated for a Barrymore Award by Philadelphia Theatre Alliance; and Salvation Road, winner of the American Alliance for Theatre in Education's Playwrights in Our Schools Award and developed through New York University's New Plays for Young Audiences program. More information about her plays is available on her website.
Leanne Griffin
Leanne Griffin has a Master's Degree in Drama, and has taught both university and high school drama. She has directed for Greystone Theatre, and acted with professional theatre companies at 25th Street Theatre and Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan. Leanne has written, directed and produced three plays for Fringe Theatre Festivals. She has also written and directed fifteen plays for high school students, winning Best Overall Production fourteen times at Regional Festivals, and winning Best Overall Production three times at Provincials with her productions of The History of Dating, Dust, and The Hotel. Leanne’s plays One Giant Leap, Summer Camp, The Circus of Grimm, Dust, Dancing With Myself and The History of Dating have been performed across Canada and the United States. Her script Bluebeard’s Chamber was selected for inclusion in the Saskatchewan Playwrights Centre Spring Festival of New Plays at Persephone Theatre, Saskatoon. Leanne's script Dancing With Myself can be purchased at YouthPLAYS. A monologue from the play can also be found in YouthPLAYS's anthology Go Solo: Contemporary Monologues for Young Actors. James Grob
James Grob is an established writer, author and playwright who is currently trying to pay the bills as a scribe in his home state of Iowa. He is a national award-winning playwright and columnist. James is also known as "IowaScribe." James is currently an assistant editor and reporter at a community newspaper in Iowa, and has recently been a creative professional with local radio. He has 30 years of experience as a newspaper editor, columnist, reporter and sports writer. He has worked in theatre as a writer, actor and director in his spare time. James currently has two plays published by YouthPLAYS, and has written over 50 plays, with over 100 productions of his work on four continents. He wrote dialogue for a daily comic strip, which appeared in newspapers throughout the Midwest. A father of two daughters, James majored in English and Communication at the University of Iowa and minored in Theatre Arts, with some Master's work in English and Theatre Arts. He is active in community theatre and has taken the stage many times, both as an actor and director. James is also a cancer fighter and, so far, a survivor. Midge Guerrera
Midge Guerrera lives half the year in a small southern Italian village. Her travel memoir, Cars, Castles, Cows and Chaos, is published by Read Furiously. For the tenth anniversary of 9/11, theatres in four states produced E-Mail: 9-12, her response to the tragedy. It is now published by Next Stage Press, with sections also in Contemporary Monologues for a New Theater, Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2018. Annarita was selected for the Samuel French 29th Annual Short Play Festival. Historic works Midge was commissioned to write and direct: Ruth St. Denis: The Dance Continues; Turnabout and Transitions, which recount events in Somerset County, New Jersey in 1776; Crane Chronicles and Stephen Crane: The Middle Years, presented by the Stephen Crane Committee at the Stephen Crane House. Next Stage Press has published Many Snows Ago, which explores the tales of Eastern Woodland Indians, and the Halloween play, Wanda the Girl Who Cried Witch.
Evan Guilford-Blake
Evan Guilford-Blake's plays for children and adults have been produced internationally. They've won 42 playwriting competitions, including Ireland's Eamon Keane and the Tennessee Williams one-act contest, twice (he is the only playwright to do so). Telling William Tell was honored as the winner of the 2006 Aurand Harris/New England Theatre Conference and the Jackie White Memorial competitions. Thirty of his scripts have been published by YouthPLAYS, Playscripts, Eldridge, Pioneer, Next Stage Press and others. He is a former professional storyteller; two volumes of his tandem storytelling scripts are published by Eldridge. Evan's novel Noir(ish) is published by Penguin, and he's won 17 awards for his short fiction. He is a Distinguished Resident Playwright Emeritus at Chicago Dramatists and a Dramatists Guild member. He and his wife (and inspiration), writer and jewelry designer Roxanna Guilford-Blake, live in the Atlanta area.
Daniel Guyton
Daniel Guyton has won numerous writing awards for his stage plays and screenplays, including the Vegas Movie Awards, the Los Angeles Film & Script Festival, the Kennedy Center, and many others. His stage plays have been produced more than 700 times around the world, and his plays have been published over 50 times in various anthologies and solo publications. He is a theatre and English professor at Georgia Military College, and a member of both the Dramatists Guild and the Writers Guild of America East.
Claudia Haas
Claudia Haas focuses on theatre for young audiences and intergenerational audiences. She is a winner of the American Alliance for Theatre and Education Distinguished Play Award for My Brother's Gift. She was an O'Neill Conference semifinalist for her 9/11 play Making Some Noise. Her plays have been widely produced in all fifty states as well as on six continents. Her youth plays have been developed through NYU's New Plays for Young Audiences - Steinhardt, The Growing Stage Children's Theatre, The Bonderman Symposium, Purple Crayon Players, the Playwrights-in-our-Schools grant and the Old Miner's Children's Playwriting Contest. Honors include winner of the Aurand Harris Memorial Playwriting Award, Anna Zornio Playwriting Competition, AATE's Unpublished Play Reading Project, University of Central Missouri's Children's Playwriting Competition, East Valley Children's Theatre Playwriting Competition and others. Member: Dramatists Guild of America, Playwrights' Center of Minneapolis, Honor Roll Playwrights, American Alliance for Theatre and Education. Cheryl Hadley
Cheryl Hadley is a wife and mother of two. Cheryl loves writing, and has written plays, skits, books of poetry, children’s books, various curriculum for children’s ministries and many other types of material. She has worked as a substitute teacher, residential child care worker and preschool teacher, while raising children and supporting her husband Keith’s job teaching choir and drama at a local public school. She continues to assist him in directing school dramatic productions while acting as director of a local preschool. Alan Haehnel
Alan Haehnel is a husband, father, grandfather, playwright and English teacher who lives in Vermont. He has published over 100 plays, mainly for high schools and middle schools. They have been performed in nearly all 50 of the United States and in many other countries around the world. Alan's one-act plays are particularly popular in drama competitions, and his 15 Reasons Not to Be in a Play has appeared three times on the Educational Theatre Association's annual list of most produced short plays in the country. Emily Hageman
Emily Hageman is a music and theatre educator currently residing in Sioux City, Iowa. Her plays have seen production with the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival, Heartland Theatre Company, A Light in Dark Places, the Red Eye 10s International Play Festival, Eden Prairie Players, Midwest Dramatists Conference, the Growing Stage Theatre, Theatre Evolve, Spokane Stage Left, Iowa State University and Gi60s. Her play Everafter.com, a comedy for four women, is currently published with YouthPLAYS. Emily's new plays are being constantly workshopped by the magnificent high school and middle school actors at Siouxland Christian School Adam Hahn
Adam Hahn has been a resident playwright at SkyPilot Theatre in Los Angeles since 2010. SkyPilot has produced his plays Earthbound: An Electronica Musical (written with composer Jonathan Price and lyricist Chana Wise) and KONG: A Goddamn Thirty-Foot Gorilla. His other plays include Frogger, Dear Abe (both first produced by Studio Roanoke in Roanoke, VA), and Feedback Loop (premiered at the 2010 Hollywood Fringe Festival). Adam holds an MFA from the Hollins University Playwright's Lab. As an actor, Adam has appeared in productions of the University of Iowa, in the Iowa Fringe Festival, and in the Piccolo Spoleto fringe theatre festival. He starred in his play Dear Abe at Studio Roanoke. He also performs long-form improv and is a graduate of the training program at iO West. Sophia Hall
Sophia Hall represents her hometown, Washington DC, as Youth Poet Laureate and Presidential Scholar. She lives a double life: 18-year-old poet by day, secret agent by night. You may have seen her on your TV screen during a commercial break—she was featured in Giant Food's "This Is Home" campaign as a spoken word artist. Her writing has been recognized by organizations like the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the Library of Congress, Button Poetry and Rattle. Her poem "Multiple Choice," won grand prize in Sixteen River Press's Youth Poetry Contest and was subsequently nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and her poem "What We Leave Behind" was a Frontier Poetry finalist for North America. Her scripts have been produced off-Broadway at the Tank, the Strathmore Arts Center and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. She currently attends the University of Pennsylvania, where she was recruited for creative writing. David Hansen
David Hansen has participated in Cleveland's theatre renaissance as the founder and artistic director of Guerrilla Theater Company and Dobama's Night Kitchen, as well as an actor and director at Cleveland Play House, Great Lakes Theater, Dobama Theatre, Beck Center and Karamu House. His produced plays include Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street, The Way I Danced With You, About a Ghoul, Rosalynde & The Falcon, Double Heart (The Courtship of Beatrice and Benedick), On the Dark Side of Twilight, and adaptations of Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles and The Secret Adversary. Solo performances include And Then You Die (How I Ran a Marathon in 26.2 Years) and his award-winning work on stillbirth, I Hate This (a play without the baby). David is Education Outreach Associate for Great Lakes Theater and the Dramatists Guild of America. He lives in Cleveland Heights, the City of Great Writers.
Bradley Hayward
Bradley Hayward grew up in a small Canadian town, where the overall lack of things to do left him plenty of time to write his first play. Since that time, he has written many published plays that have been produced in over 20 countries around the world (India, Germany, Spain, Australia, and Japan, to name a few). Two of his short plays, The Yogurt Connection and The Sexual Conspiracy, were produced Off-Broadway. His one-acts geared toward high school students have been presented at Thespian festivals across the United States and Canada. He currently lives in Toronto, Canada. Rose Helsinger
Rose Helsinger is a playwright and author from Florida. Her work, Albino Crocodile, has been produced in New York and internationally as part of After Orlando, a collection of short plays written in response to the Pulse nightclub shooting by Missing Bolts Productions and NoPassport Theatre Alliance and Press. Beth Marshall Presents, Kangagirl Productions and the Orlando Shakespeare Theatre's annual Playfest have produced her plays. Her poetry has been published by The Evening Street Review. Her short stories have been published by The Kudzu Review, Flash Fiction Online and Page 15. She is a graduate of Florida State University's Creative Writing program. Maria Hernandez
Maria Hernandez recently graduated from Middleburg Academy High School and is in pursuit of an art and design career. Since elementary school, she loved writing poetry and short stories. Playwriting was first introduced to her when she decided to participate in a playwriting club formed by her world religions teacher. With the influence of her drama classmates and experienced playwriting teacher, she became one of three authors of Cupid and Psyche: An Internet Love Story. She hopes to find an audience that will appreciate her artwork as well as her writing in the near future. If anyone is to go through her school notebooks, they would find that they're full of drawings and rhyming words used in poems. Her favorite conversation topics are dreams, colors and paranormal tales. Her waterproof camera is her beloved companion. Donna Hoke
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Ensemble playwright at Road Less Traveled Productions, Donna Hoke's work has so far been seen in 48 states and on 5 continents. Plays include Brilliant Works of Art (Kilroys List), Elevator Girl (O'Neill and Princess Grace finalist) and Teach (multiple award-winner and finalist). She is also a New York Times-published crossword puzzle constructor; author of two trivia volumes, as well as Neko and the Twiggets, a children's book; and founder/co-curator of BUA Takes 10: GLBT Short Stories. Donna has received an Individual Artist Award from the New York State Council on the Arts to develop Hearts of Stone and is a three-time Artie Award-winner for Outstanding New Play (Seeds, Sons & Lovers, Once In My Lifetime). In its final three years, Artvoice named her Buffalo's Best Writer—the only woman ever to receive the designation. She has also served the Dramatists Guild in multiple capacities since 2013. Brent Holland
Brent Holland teaches theatre at Laney High School (his alma mater) in Wilmington, North Carolina. He started writing for his "drama kids," but now his plays have been performed all over the U.S. and internationally. Originally a physical education teacher, he is a high-ranking black belt in Isshin-Ryu Karate, having trained since childhood and owned his own dojo since 2001. When not at Laney or the dojo, Brent enjoys spending time with his family, working on old arcade machines and surfing. Elizabeth Brendel Horn
Elizabeth Brendel Horn is an associate professor of Theatre for Young Audiences and Creative Drama at Northwestern University and a playwright, director, applied theatre artist and the author of Activated Script Analysis (Routledge). Prior to her appointment at Northwestern, she was an associate professor at the University of Central Florida in partnership with Orlando Family Stage. At UCF, Elizabeth directed the Jeanette M Gould Traveling Theater, which brought theatre-based programming to youth in pediatric hospitals. She also co-directed Mind Matters, a collaboration of UCF and Orlando Family Stage that helps high school students develop mental health tools to lead more resilient lives. Through Mind Matters, Elizabeth partnered with YouthPLAYS to create Pieces of Mind: Ten Plays About Mental Health for Teens. Her other plays published with YouthPLAYS are Elektra, Medea and SWALLOWED! (an existential crisis).
Velina Hasu Houston
Houston’s literary career began Off-Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club, expanding globally. Her play Tea has been designated a theatre canon classic. With 43 writing commissions, she has been honored by several institutions including the Kennedy Center, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Japan Foundation and Smithsonian Institution. She writes theatre, musical theatre, opera and film; she is a published poet, essayist and novelist. At the University of Southern California, she founded graduate playwriting and co-founded Asian American cultural studies in the early 1990s; and is a Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Resident Playwright. A Fulbright scholar, she served on the State Department’s Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission. She is on the Board of Trustees, Berklee College, Boston; Writers’ Odyssey Associate Artist, Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, Los Angeles; and on HERO Theatre’s advisory council. Memberships: Writers Guild of America, west; Dramatists Guild, League of Professional Theatre Women and Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights. Archives: The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens.
Cassandra Hsiao
Cassandra Hsiao is a Malaysian-Chinese Taiwanese American writer. She received her bachelor's degree from Yale University in Theater & Performance Studies and Ethnicity, Race & Migration. Her short script CHAMBER garnered her recognition as a semi finalist for CAPE's 2022 Julia S. Gouw Short Film Challenge. Her plays have been produced across the country by The Blank Theatre, Writopia Labs, Princeton University, Durango Arts Center, California Playwrights Project and Yale University. Her poetry has been published by national and international lit magazines and organizations. In her career as a kid reporter, she won a Gracie Award for her entertainment journalism and was recognized as a Voices Fellow by the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA). Elana and Les Hunter
Elana and Les Hunter live in Toronto, Ontario, with their two boys, Asher and Herschel. Elana is a therapist and the Clinical Director of Cleveland Health and Wellness Center, and Les teaches English and creative writing at Baldwin Wallace University. He is co-editor of the textbook Decentered Playwriting: Alternative Techniques for the Stage (Routledge). Other plays Elana and Les have written together include Dating Curveball (Dobama Theatre) and A Light in the Night (Talespinner Children's Theatre). Catherine Hurd
Catherine Hurd graduated from UCLA (MFA Screenwriting) and from Florida Atlantic University (BFA Theater). She optioned three screenplays in Los Angeles and won several screenwriting awards (Writer's Digest, Stephen N. Gershenson/Comedy Writing, Jay Grossman/Comedy Writing, Marty Klein/Comedy Writing, Chesterfield Film Company and Moondance Film Festival). She produced the feature film Bring Him Home (Ed Asner) and has written for Lifetime Movies. Catherine is the book writer/lyricist for the musical Zuccotti Park, which won Best Director and Best Musical at Venus Adonis NYC Theater Festival. Catherine's full-length play Until Death Do Us Part was a finalist in the NYC Theater Festival. Rumpelstiltskin, The Game of the Name premiered at the Woodland Opera House and was nominated for ten Elly Awards by SARTA (Sacramento Area Regional Theater Alliance) and won six. Catherine is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.