MEET THE 2010 EMERGING WRITERS GROUP

Augusto Federico Amador studied acting under Diana Castle in Los Angeles before independently pursuing writing. Workshops and readings of his work have been presented at the Audrey-Skirball Kenis Theater Projects, John Anson Ford Theater, Ricardo Montalban Theater, Playwrights Arena, Terra Nova Collective's Groundbreaker Series, INTAR Theatre, and Repertorio Espanol. In 2009, he was a finalist for the MetLife Foundation Nuestras Voces National Playwriting Award.

Nikole Beckwith’s plays have been read at Ensemble Studio Theater, LAByrinth Theater Company, The Rattlestick Playwrights Theater and Barrow Street Theater. She is a member of EST's Youngblood and was a finalist for the P73 Playwriting Fellowship. As an actor, Beckwith has developed new work with Gregory S. Moss and Eric Bogosian, among others, and is a member of the Striking Viking Story Pirates. She recently made her New York stage debut in Joshua Conkel's hit play MilkMilkLemonade.

Javierantonio González is the author of seven plays and adaptations including FLORIDITA, my Love (INTAR), Barceloneta, de noche (Union Theatre, London/Teatro IATI, NY), Un instante en una especie de flash (Yerbabruja, Puerto Rico), Uneventful Deaths for Agathon (FringeNYC) and Open up, Hadrian. He is the Artistic Director of Caborca and co-Artistic Director of Quality Meats. Javierantonio is the designer of the Theatre Majors Program at DreamYard Preparatory High School and holds an MFA in Directing from Columbia University.

Sevan Greene is a second generation Lebanese-Armenian/Pakistani/now-American actor and writer. He made his NYC debut in the Off-Broadway Lucille Lortel Award-winning play Betrayed and has also appeared in NYTW's Aftermath, Prospect Theatre's Mapquest, Perez Hilton Saves the Universe at the NYC Fringe/Joe's Pub, and others. Since his writing debut for the 2009 Arab-American Comedy Festival he has written the plays Forgotten Bread, DOON, Say Something, The Altared Saints, the screenplays NYB and (in parentheses), and the web series MixedNutz. He holds too many degrees (2 B.A.s and 2 M.A.s) from the University of South Florida. He is also a member of Rising Circle Theater Collective's inaugural InkTANK Playwriting Development Lab. www.sevangreene.com.

Aaron Wigdor Levy is originally from Chicago and now lives in Brooklyn, NY. His plays include This is Not a Time Bomb, Townie, Central Standard Time and the one act plays First/ Last and Christmas Cheer on the Broadway Local among others. His plays have been read or developed at The New Group, The Cherry Lane Theatre, The Source Theater Festival and NYU. He was a member of the Royal Court Theatre’s New York Residency and was a finalist for the Heidaman award given out by The Actors’ Theater of Louisville. First/ Last premiered at the inaugural 2008 Source Theater Festival in Washington D.C. which will also produce This is Not a Time Bomb this summer. He received his MFA from the Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU where he studied with David Ives and Mac Wellman.

Sukari Jones’ musicals include The River Is Me and Snobbles The Great. She is a member of the BMI Musical Theatre Writing Workshop. She holds a B.A. from Vassar College and an M.F.A. from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program.

Laura Marks’ play about the foreclosure crisis, Bethany (finalist for Clubbed Thumb’s Biennial Commission, finalist for Synchronicity Theater’s SheWrites competition, shortlisted for NYSAF Founders Award) has received readings at Reverie Productions’ Wet Ink Festival, the Astoria Performing Arts Center’s 15/20’s Series, and Synchronicity Theatre in Atlanta. Previously produced works include Unbound with director Davis McCallum (produced by Prospect Theater Company at the West End Theatre, workshopped by the Powerhouse apprentices at New York Stage & Film, later produced by the University of Rhode Island) and Hypothesis, a commissioned one-act about Voltaire (Prospect Theater Company). Laura grew up in Kentucky and started out as an actor, appearing in premieres of new work by Herman D. Farrell, Christina Gorman, Noah Haidle, Carson Kreitzer, Christopher Shinn et al. In the fall of 2010 she will be entering the playwriting program at the Juilliard School.

Anna Moench’s plays have been produced at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Dixon Place, The Looking Glass Theatre, Spoke The Hub, and FringeNYC and developed at New Dramatists, The Inkwell, and the Last Frontier Theatre Conference. Moench was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the 2009 Sewanee Writers’ Conference and has received a Jerome Foundation Travel Grant and an EST/Sloan commission. She is a member of Youngblood at EST and Co-Artistic Director of anna&meredith, a cross-disciplinary performance company.

Dominique Morisseau is a playwright, actress, and arts advocate for social justice. Her list of plays includes Black at Michigan (Cherry Lane Studio), Retrospect For Life (Hip Hop Theatre Festival), and Follow Me To Nellie’s (the Standard). She is the recipient of two NAACP Image Awards, a Jane Chambers Award Honor, a Wendy Wasserstein nomination, and a scholarship to the Centrum Writer’s Conference (Port Washington), and the Black Women Playwrights Conference (Chicago).

Jerome A. Parker’s play Miracle On Monroe received the Lorraine Hansberry Award from the Kennedy Center. Other works include Origins Of Us (Tim Robbins Playwriting Award), Ballad Of Sad Young Men (Francis Ford Coppola One act Series, Best Short in the Downtown Urban Theater Festival), and House Of Dinah (Faces of the World Festival – Los Angeles Theater Center). Jerome received his BA in Theatre from Williams College, his MFA in Playwriting from UCLA and studied costumes at the Juilliard School. In 2008, he participated in the Eugene O’Neill Playwriting Conference as a fellow.

Stella Fawn Ragsdale’s play Spring, which focuses on her Appalachian heritage and family tales, was recently produced by the Water Series Company at Knoxville Theater Downtown. Ragsdale’s other plays include Mockingbird, Mandelstam or The Thieves, and Aeneas Landed. She holds an MFA in playwriting from NYU's Tisch School of the arts and a BA from the University of Tennessee.


MEET THE 2009 EMERGING WRITERS GROUP 

BIOS

J. Julian Christopher received a Master of Fine Arts Degree from The Actors Studio Drama School at New School University. Julian trained as an actor and has performed in various productions such as TBA (Second Generation Theatre), The Karaoke Show (Off-Broadway), Art Gallery (Manhattan Theatre Source), A Bright Room Called Day (New School for Drama), Nina in the Morning (Above Ground Theatre Ensemble), The Three Gods (directed by Elizabeth Swados), On Broken Wings (Traveling Omnibus of Ireland), Taming of the Shrew (The Arena Players), and The Flea Theatre's 'Twas the Night Before... series featuring work by Christopher Durang, Mac Wellman, Len Jenkins, Roger Rosenblatt, and Elizabeth Swados. Christopher's film credits include: Friendly Fire, Art Gallery, and Romance Larghetto. Julian has also appeared in comedy shorts for Black20.com & Basement View Improv. Directing credits include Jeffrey (Yvonne Studio Theatre 2000), Company (Governor's School of New Jersey), Welcome to the Moon and Other Plays (MRC), Blood Wedding (MRC), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (MRC), The Taming of the Shrew (MRC) and Moby Dick: The Musical (Trinity Theatre). J. Julian Christopher directed Robert J. Bonocore's The Onion Lovers as part of the New York International Fringe Festival in August of 2006 for his production company Craigan Moon Productions. Julian is a founding member of Three Monos Ensemble, where his first play, Beast: A Parable was developed, and presented at FringeNYC 2008. Julian is at the very beginning of his playwriting career and hopes to develop his next two plays, Skinned and The Tree Doctor. Thanks to The Public for this amazing opportunity. Julian currently lives in Forest Hills, Queens with his amazingly supportive partner, Mark Blaustein. www.jjulianchristopher.com

A first-generation South Asian American writer, actor, and activist, Deen was grew up mostly in Bolton, Connecticut. After two years at Columbia University, NYC, he moved to the Berkshires where he began to act in earnest. He went on to an undergraduate degree from UMass Amherst, where he designed his own major and wrote the full-length play Shut Up!, which won him the Dennis Johnston Playwriting Prize and the James Baldwin Award (an excerpt was stage-read in the Word! 2001 Festival in Amherst). After a brief stint as a journalist for the Valley Advocate newspaper, he returned to NYC to get his MFA from the Actors Studio Drama School/New School for Drama. His plays have appeared at W.O.W. Cafe Theatre, Chernuchin Theatre, Theatre Row, Vital Theatre, and the Abrons Arts Center, and include Butchus Homosexualis, Sikhandini, Barely Breathing (semi-finalist for the Samuel French Festival of One-Acts), Saffron, and Seven-Year Itch. His full-length play, ...Tank & Horse (which he wrote, directed, and produced), was produced at the 2007 Berkshire Fringe Festival in Great Barrington, Mass. His short film, Pigeon Man, was completed in 2008. He has appeared as an actor in numerous productions, and was last seen in the Washington Shakespeare Company's winter 2009 production of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. He is an alumni member of Desipina, as well a member of the Actors Studio PD Workshop and the Dramatists Guild. (Deen’s solo show, Draw the Line, will appear at Dixon Place this summer.)

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is a Brooklyn-based playwright and performer from Washington, D.C., whose plays include: Neighbors, Face #1-3, Thirst, Zoo, Heart!!!, and Content. He is also one-half of enemyResearch, a performance duo with whom he has created/performed in Garbage, Schechnershirts, and The Amateurs. His work has been/will be seen at Prelude '08, New York Theatre Workshop, PS122, McCarter Theatre, Dixon Place, Providence Black Repertory, Links Hall, and Soho Rep. He is a former NYTW Playwriting fellow, an alum of the Hemispheric Institute's EMERGENYC Program, and is currently a member of the Soho Rep Writers/Directors Lab. He also holds an M.A. in Performance Studies from NYU.

 

Bridget Kelso uses her writing to explore and define herself and her world. She is a writer, an actor, and a mother, and has lived in Harlem for the last 20 years. Hailing from Chicago, Bridget has performed on several prominent New York stages and around the world. She has also appeared on daytime television and in several commercials. Her interest in African and African American theatrical techniques was cultivated while she was devising and implementing educational theatre workshops in the NYC Public Schools as a member of the Creative Arts Team. Her NYU Masters Thesis project, Symptoms of Liberty, dramatized Nat Turner’s famous slave rebellion and incorporated the traditional African techniques of call and response, storytelling and spiritual co-existence. She is deeply interested in exploring the Antebellum time period in her work, as she feels this time period represents a little examined period of strength and creativity for African Americans. Bridget is currently working on a children’s book series based on her experiences with her son, a book of poetry, and a new play, A Little Bird Sings Freedom. Her writing has appeared in Harlem Parent Magazine and Essence. She is eternally grateful to her family and friends for their love and support and honored to be a member of the Public Theater’s 2009 Emerging Writers Group.

Mona Mansour began her theater career as an actress, studying acting at UCSD (Dream Play, dir. Michael Hackett; Good Person of Szechuan, dir. Michael Greif) and SMU, where she received a BFA in Theater/Acting (Oh What a Lovely War!, Taken in Marriage, among others). She later starred in productions with Chicago’s Griffin Theater and L.A.’s Moving Arts. She was part of L.A.'s famed Groundlings Theater, where she wrote and performed her own material in the Sunday Company for a year and a half. Her first play, Me and the SLA (Groundling Theater, Seattle Fringe Fest – Best of the Fest) focused on her adult and childhood obsession with Patricia Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army. Her play Girl Scouts of America (co-written with Andrea Berloff) had a reading at New York Theater Workshop, was part of the Public Theater's New Work Now!, and had a successful outing at NYC Fringe 2006. Her play Others had a staged reading at the Flea Theater in August 2007, directed by Sharon Lennon. Mona was recently chosen as "One of 50 to Watch" by the Dramatists Guild. Television credits include produced episodes of Showtime's Dead Like Me and the CBS show Queens Supreme. She curated, with Lisa Kron, a piece for gay, lesbian, and transgender youth called 'Nuff Said, which was performed at Dance Theater Workshop in NYC. In her spare time, Mona teaches improv and writing classes to adults over 60 in NYC.

Vickie Ramirez is a Tuscarora playwright and a founding member of Chukalokoli Native Theater Ensemble and Amerinda Theater. She co-created In The Spirit (Ensemble Studio Theater) with Chukalokoli and playwright Edward Allan Baker. Her first play Smoke (first in the Cornsoup Trilogy) received staged readings at the Public Theater in partnership with Amerinda; BOO-Arts; and via the Roundabout Theater's Different Voices Program (directed by Colman Domingo). Her Spotlight Series play Ashes, (the second in the trilogy) was recently presented as a staged reading at the Public Theater in partnership with Amerinda. Vickie has also written screenplays and teleplays, including MonkeyDog, Rachel vs. The Little Warriors and Lotto Munney. Honors include 2009/2010 New York City Urban Artists Fellowship, 2010 NYSCA Individual Artist Award and scholarship support from Dreamcatchers Inc. Vickie is a regular columnist for Talking Stick, Native Arts Quarterly. She would also like to publicly promise her father--yes--after she finishes with the “Indian stuff,” she will write about the Jamaican side of the family too!

Jordan Seavey was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He co-founded and co-artistic directs NYC theatre company CollaborationTown (www.collaborationtown.org). With CTown, he most recently workshopped his play The Truth Will Out, and he has written and/or co-written their plays Townwille, The Astronomer's Triangle (4 New York Innovative Theatre Award nominations), The Trading Floor, This is a Newspaper (FringeNYC Excellence Award, 2003), and Dante's Inferno. His play 6969 (at 59E59 Theaters) garnered six 2007 NYIT Award nominations, winning three. His play Children at Play was invited to be part of the Lark Play Development Center's Playwrights' Week 2007 (dir. Jackson Gay). His other plays include Ann Coulter: I'm Going to Blow Your Fucking Brains Out, Are You Writing From the Heart?, 69 Love Scenes, American Child, and The Long Distance. Jordan was a 2003 Edward F. Albee Foundation fellow in playwriting, a two-time fellow at Robert Wilson's Watermill Center, and a two-time Lower Manhattan Cultural Council space grant recipient. He was an invited playwright on the New York Stage & Film/Lark Play Development Center 2008 Playwrights' Retreat where he began a new play, The Funny Pain.

Alena Smith Alena Smith grew up in the Hudson Valley and now lives in Brooklyn, NY. Her play THE SACRIFICES was produced in the 2009 Summer Play Festival (dir. Sam Gold). Previously the play received a staged reading at Playwrights Horizons (dir. Alex Timbers). Her piece THE PIVEN MONOLOGUES, a collection of internet comments, will be presented at Joe’s Pub in Sept/Oct 2009. Other plays include THE LACY PROJECT (A.R.T. Institute; Ohio Theatre; Yale Drama); SATURNALIA IN POUGHKEEPSIE (Yale); ALICE EAT YOUR WORDS (Northwestern University; Yale Cabaret; Haverford College); IT OR HER (Philadelphia Live Arts; Brown University); and APPLE OF DISCORD (Philly Fringe; UPenn). Alena is a 2008-09 Artists Fellow in Playwriting with the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). She has been a finalist for the O’Neill Playwrights Conference and the Princess Grace Award, and was nominated by the Public for the Old Vic New Voices US/UK Exchange. BA, Haverford College, Honors in Philosophy; MFA, Yale School of Drama, ASCAP Cole Porter Prize in Playwriting.

Kevin Christopher Snipes is the author of such plays as A Bitter Taste, The Chimes, Small Gods, Beautiful World, Party Lights and Hip-Skidoo. His work has been performed at the Summer Play Festival (SPF), Ensemble Studio Theatre, Orlando Shakespeare, Bailiwick Repertory, New York Stage & Film, The Gallery Players, Moving Arts, and the Hippodrome State Theatre (Fl). His one-act Virgin Rock is published in The Best Plays of the Riant Strawberry One-Act Festival: Volume 3. Kevin is the recipient of a 2008 Artists Fellow in Playwriting/Screenwriting from the New York Foundation for the Arts and an Alfred P. Sloan Screenwriting Fellowship. He has also been a finalist for the Princess Grace Playwriting Fellowship, the O’Neill Conference, Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab and the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship. He holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon University, where he was part of a team of writers and scientists who built Valerie, the world’s first storytelling robot receptionist (formerly on display at CMU’s School of Computer Sciences). His adventures in theater can be followed at www.kevinchristophersnipes.blogspot.com.

Lauren Yee has been a Dramatists Guild fellow and a MacDowell Colony fellow, as well as a finalist for the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, the Heideman Award, the Jerome Fellowship, the PEN USA Literary Award for Drama, the PONY Fellowship, and the Wasserstein Prize. Her full-length play Ching Chong Chinaman was a finalist for the 2008 Princess Grace Award and the winner of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival’s 2010 Paula Vogel Award and Kumu Kahua Theatre’s 2007 Pacific Rim Prize. The play has been produced at Berkeley’s Impact Theatre, Minneapolis’s Mu Performing Arts, the New York International Fringe Festival, New York City’s Pan Asian Rep, and Seattle’s SIS Productions. The play will be published by Samuel French in 2010. She is currently working on a new commission for AlterTheater (slated for production in 2011). A graduate of Yale University, Lauren is pursuing her MFA in playwriting at UCSD, studying under Naomi Iizuka.

 

MEET THE 2008 INAUGURAL EMERGING WRITERS GROUP

Back Row: Christina Gorman, Akin Salawu, Alejandro Morales, Don Nguyen
Middle Row: Aladdin Ullah, Pia Wilson, Chris Cragin Day, Raúl Castillo
Front Row: Ethan Lipton, Radha Blank, Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko, Leila Buck

CLICK HERE to read about the Emerging Writers Group 2008 Spotlight Series. 

BIOS

Radha Blank transitioned from acting to writing with her solo B-ball ‘dramedy' Kenya (Dixon Place, HERE, The Public Theater's New Work Now!, Hip-Hop Theater Festival; awards: New Professional Theatre's Annual Writers Award for Best Script, The NY Foundation for the Arts Artists Fellowship) She then received Nickolodeon's Writers Fellowship and went on to write for shows Little Bill and The Backyardigans. Radha later wrote the pilot My Life Is A Joke based on her life as a young comic in NYC, for The N. She wrote Papa Moco Jumbie, an animated short which just made its network debut on Noggin. Radha's play seed was recently presented in Classical Theatre of Harlem's Future Classics reading series and will be developed this summer as a part of CTH's Project Classics initiative. Her latest solo performance piece, Happy.Flower.Nail. was recently accepted for development in Voice & Visions Envision Retreat at Bard. Radha has instructed NYC youth in poetry and playwriting for over thirteen years and is a student of every child she meets. Thanks Mom & Ravi. I love you....

Leila Buck has toured the U.S., Europe and China since 1998 with her award-winning solo show, ISite, on growing up in between worlds. Her second play, In the Crossing, was first performed in New Work Now! 2006, and has since been developed with the support of Theater J, New York Theatre Workshop, Silk Road Theatre Project, Chautauqua Institution, the Brooklyn Museum, Epic Theatre Center, The Public, Queens Theatre in the Park and the Lark Play Development Center where it was a finalist for Playwrights' Week 2009. For her newest work-in-progress, Hkeelee, begun in the EWG, Leila received a Special Jury Prize from the Middle East America grant co-sponsored by Silk Road (Chicago), Lark Play Development Center (New York), and Golden Thread Productions (San Francisco). As an actress Leila was most recently seen in Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen's critically-acclaimed Aftermath at New York Theatre Workshop (Drama League nominee- Production and Distinguished Performance), and Scorched by Wajdi Mouawad, directed by Blanka Zizka, at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia (Barrymore Award, Outstanding Ensemble in a Play). Leila has had the honor of being a Usual Suspect with NYTW, and of working with writers and directors including Jo Bonney, Thomas Kail, Annie Dorsen, Yussef el Guindi, Isis Misdary and Naomi Wallace. After training and working with Creative Arts Team for five years, Leila was NYTW's teaching artist at the Khalil Gibran International Academy, America's first dual language English-Arabic public school. She has conducted workshops on storytelling and drama for cross-cultural engagement at conferences, universities, schools and cultural centers across the U.S. and around the world, most recently as a U.S. State Department Cultural Envoy using drama and storytelling to address tensions between Muslim immigrants and the wider population in Denmark. Her work has appeared in American Theatre and Mizna magazine, The New York Times and Lebanon's Daily Star and on "Brian Lehrer Live" and WBAI NY public radio. Her essay on Arab-American political theater can be found in Etching Our Own Image: Voices from the Arab American Art Movement, from Cambridge Scholars Press. Leila has been a founding member of Nibras Arab-American Theater Collective, Artistic Director of Nisaa Arab-American Women's Collective, and a writer and performer for the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival. She holds a B.A. in Theater from Wesleyan University and a Master's in Drama for Education about the Arab World from NYU, is conversationally fluent in French, Spanish and Arabic and has performed, lived, taught and traveled in over 17 countries in Europe and the Arab World.

Raúl Castillo is a proud member of LAByrinth Theater Company, The Public Theater’s inaugural Emerging Writers Group, and the Hispanic Playwrights in Residence Lab at Intar Theater. Was born and raised on the border between McAllen, TX and Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Studied Playwriting, Theater Studies, Spanish Literature and Acting at Boston University where he was a member of the East Coast Chicano Student Forum. Author of the play Knives and Other Sharp Objects, which premiered in April 2009 at the Public Theater’s Public LAB in a co-production with LAByrinth directed by Felix Solis. His one-act The Biggest Asshole Ever Born premiered in March 2010 at Intar’s New Works Festival as part of One Night in the Valley: Four Plays by South Texas Writers, which he co-produced. With LAByrinth, he has developed the full-length plays City of Palms and Bus Accident Play, both of which were featured in the company’s Barn Series Festival at the Public. His one-act play Death on my Mind is published by Dramatic Publishing and has been produced by the Cherry Lane and the Bloomington Playwright’s Project. Theater Acting credits include: Cusi Cram’s A Lifetime Burning (Primary Stages, dir. Pam McKinnon), References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot (Abroad Stage Co., dir. Pippin Parker), Throat (Intar), School of the Americas (LAByrinth/Public Theater, dir. Mark Wing-Davey), Open House (Foundry Theatre, dir. Melanie Joseph), Flowers (Ensemble Studio Theater), Camino/Montaña (Intar), Minotaur (LAB's Barn Series). Film and TV credits include: Aaron Katz's Cold Weather (SXSW Film Festival, recently acquired by IFC), Cruz Angeles's Don't Let Me Drown (Sundance 2009), Amexicano (Maya Entertainment, Tribeca 2007), Nurse Jackie, Law and Order.

Chris Cragin spent her childhood in the Phillippines, Hong Kong and China before returning to Oklahoma where she spent her teenage and college years. While earning her MFA in Stage Directing from Baylor University, she found her true artistic passion, playwriting. Since, she has written seven full length plays including: The River Nun (Public Theater EWG Spotlight reading), War in a Manger (commissioned by Art Within Theatre in Atlanta), Emily (Firebone Theatre, NYC in 2009, Acacia Theatre, Milwaukee 2008, and workshopped at Pacific Theatre Vancouver, 2007), Deadheading Roses (Firebone Theatre, Acacia Theatre, and published by Original Works Publishing), Debutantes Anonymous (workshopped at The Lamb's Theatre), Love and Money, and Lady of the Dunes. She is currently writing the book to a musical, Son of a Khrusty (NDNW Drama League Fellowship). Chris also has six one act plays: Milking Success (Actor's Theatre of Louisville Semi-Finalist and MWTC finalist), Peanut Butter or Soy (Baylor University), Pankhurst (Baylor University), Nathaniel, Dig (The Public EWG retreat), and Port Authority (The Public EWG retreat). She and her husband, Steven Day, provide the artistic and managerial direction for their company, Firebone Theatre (www.firebonetheatre.com).

Christina Gorman’s play American Myth was developed at The Public Theater, while she was a member of The Public’s inaugural Emerging Writers Group and where it was presented as part of The Public Theater’s Spotlight Series. The play was also presented as part of the hotINK International Festival, and it was named a finalist for the Princess Grace Award. Her play Split Wide Open has been produced at SPF in New York City and was developed with a fellowship from Ensemble Studio Theatre through its New Voices Program. The play was also named runner-up for the Princess Grace Award. Just Knots was named a winner of the Samuel French Short Play Festival and is published in the Samuel French Publication Off-Off Broadway Festival Plays, 34th Series. The play has also been produced by CockEyed Optimists Theatre Company. DNA has been produced at Prospect Theatre Company, Hangar Theatre, Samuel French Short Play Festival, and in the New York International Fringe Festival, where it received the award for Overall Excellence in Playwriting. Keep The Change, a site-specific play co-written with Joy Tomasko, has been produced by the Women's Project for the World Financial Center's Word of Mouth Festival. Christina’s is at work on her latest play, Orion Rising, which recently received a Roundtable reading at the Lark Play Development Center. She is a 2010 Fellow of the New York Foundation for the Arts, member of the SPF Script Advisory Committee, and alumna of the Women’s Project Playwrights Lab.

Ethan Lipton is a winner of a 2008 NYFA grant for playwriting.  Ethan's play Goodbye April, Hello May was produced at HERE in 2007, directed by Patrick McNulty.  His play Meat has been produced in New York, at the Edinburgh Fringe and in Los Angeles, where it earned a Drama-Logue Award for playwriting. Other plays include One Hundred Aspects of the Moon, for Clubbed Thumb's Summerworks 2005, and Hope on the Range, for Buffalo Nights. Ethan has been a writer in residence with New York Stage & Film and the resident playwright for Buffalo Nights. He has also worked as a performer with Elevator Repair Service (Gatz) and dance/theater company El Gato Teatro (Laredo).  As a songwriter and bandleader, Ethan has released three albums and played extensively in New York and beyond, including Joe's Pub, Celebrate Brooklyn, the Camden Opera House, MassMoca and the Silverlake Lounge.  For more information on Ethan's band, go to www.ethanlipton.com.

Alejandro Morales is the author of the silent concerto (two FringeNYC Awards and one Innovative Theater Award), sweaty palms, sebastian (winner 2002 Whitfield Cook Award), expat/inferno (winner 2005 Fringe NYC Overall Achievement), marea, castle of blood, and the october crisis (to laura) (cited four times in OffOffOff.com's Best in Fringe 2008, including Best Script).  His plays have been presented/developed at The Public Theater, INTAR, South Coast Repertory, The New York International Fringe Festival and Mabou Mines.  A collection of his plays has been published by NoPassport Press.  He is a founder and Co-Artistic Director of the award-winning Packawallop Productions.  He is a member of the Dramatists Guild and an alumnus of New Dramatists.

Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko was born in Tanzania but raised in neighboring Kenya and other east African countries. Nanna worked for Reuters News Agency in their regional headquarters in East Africa for several years. As a feature writer and journalist, Nanna witnessed much that has become material for plays, fiction and non-fiction. In New York, Nanna joined Reuters Equities Desk before attending Columbia University, graduating Magna Cum Laude.  After a brief stint at the Iowa Writers Workshop, Nanna was selected by the Public Theatre's Emerging Writers' Group. Plays include Waafrika (now a trilogy); Are Women Human? (published in the anthology Plays and Playwrights 2008/2009); Asymmetrical Me; Once A Man, Always A Man; Mwena (performed at the Culture Project in 2008 for Women's Center Stage); and several others. Nanna wishes to thank the Public Theatre for launching this initiative and an amazing year under their wing.

Don Nguyen was born in Saigon, Vietnam, grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska, and currently resides in Astoria, Queens.  Don studied theatre at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and he served as the Artistic Director of the Shelterbelt Theatre in Omaha from 1999-2003.  As a writer, Don's full-length plays include Three To Beam Up (The Shelterbelt Theatre, Nebraska Arts Grant recipient), The Man From Saigon, and Red Flamboyant.  His one-act play The Harlequin Maneuvre was a finalist in the Riant Theatre's Strawberry One-Act Festival (2004) and was published in The Best of the Strawberry One-Act Festival, Volume 1.  It has subsequently been produced in New York, Nebraska, and Canada.  Other one act plays include The Dragon Lord and the Fairy Queen (commissioned by The Lincoln Community Playhouse), A Decision of Extraordinary Magnitude, and a collection of eight Halloween plays: Bloodsucker, The Woman in the Blue Dress, Iron Chef: Battle of the Global Cuisine, Cooking with Julia, Soulmates, Torture, Survivor Down Under, and The Deadly Seduction, which were all produced by The Shelterbelt Theatre.  Other short plays and monologues include Sexual Chocolate (The Secret Theatre, Long Island City) and Girl Reflected (Emerging Writers Group Retreat).

As a Stanford undergrad, Akin Salawu founded and ran ergo student theater troupe which earned him the Sherifa Omade Edoga Prize for mounting culturally diverse theatre. In June 2006, he received his Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University's Film Division where he was accepted with the Dean's Fellowship. He is also a two time Tribeca All Access Winner for his stage play, You Dead Yet?, and his screenplay, Glory Masters (which also won the 2006 Columbia Screenplay contest). Additionally, his plays You Dead Yet? and Your God's Not Coming have both been part of New Heritage Theater's Roger Furman Reading Series.  When not writing, Akin is a professional film and video editor and was an avid grassroots Obama Organizer. Prior to the campaign, Akin firmly believed that art and politics never mix. Then an invitation to write a play for an anti-war benefit yielded one of the most satisfying artistic experiences of his career. The Public Theater's Emerging Writers Group has given Akin Salawu a space to explore the latest startling by-product of this awakening.

Aladdin Ullah has been pioneering the past decade as one of the very first South Asians to perform stand-up comedy on national television on HBO, Comedy Central, MTV, BET, and PBS. Co-founder and host of the multi-ethnic stand-up show "Colorblind," which Mel Watkins of The New York Times hailed as "hilarious, thought provoking and ground breaking."  Theater: Indio, directed by Loretta Greco (New Work Now!-NYSF/Public Theater), Mike Batistick's Port Authority Throwdown (Culture Project), Rain from out of the Blue (NY Int'l Fringe Fest).  Workshops: NY Stage & Film, Second Stage, Ma-Yi, Lark Theater, Working Theater, and Cape Cod Theater Project.  Television: Law and Order, Uncle Morty's Dub Shack (IATV - Telly award for best comedy series), Desis: South Asians in NY (PBS).  Appeared in several commercials as an actor and voiceover artist.  Film: The animated feature Sita Sings The Blues (Best Animated Feature - Berlin and Tribeca film festivals), American Desi.  Recipient of the Paul Robeson development grant.

Pia N. Wilson received a 2009 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She is a member of the 2009 Project Footlight team of composers and librettists and is a 2009 resident in the Women's Work Lab at New Perspectives Theatre.   Her full-length drama, Tree of Life, received a 2007 workshop production at The Red Room Theater. The River Pure for Healing was part of the 2008 Resilience of the Spirit play festival and received a staged reading from Horse Trade Theater Group. Short plays and one-acts: Dressed In Your Dreams (Stagecrafter's New Works Play Festival); Do You Proud (Eclectic Theater Company's "Got a Minute?" play festival); Whatever and Delicately (Groove Mama Ink; The Looking Glass Theatre's Spring 2008 Writer/Director Forum); The Rooster Never Crows (OneHeart Productions); All the Pretty Girls (The Looking Glass Theatre's Spring 2009 Writer/Director Forum).