African American & Black

Chisa Hutchinson

Representative Plays:

Somebody’s Daughter (2018)
Dead & Breathing (2017)
Surely Goodness and Mercy (2017)
Alondra Was Here (2013)
She Like Girls (2010)
The Subject (2008)

Bio:

Chisa Hutchinson (B.A. Vassar College; M.F.A NYU - Tisch School of the Arts) is a New York-based playwright and screenwriter. Most recently, her radio drama, Proof of Love, was presented by Audible and New York Theatre Workshop at the Minetta Lane Theater in NYC and can now...

Cheryl L. West

Representative Plays:

Akeelah and the Bee (2015)
Play On! (1997)
Holiday Heart (1994)

Bio:

Cheryl L. West was born in Chicago in 1965. She holds three academic degrees, one of which is from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Prior to her work as a playwright, she was a teacher and social worker. She is the recipient of several awards such as the Charlotte B. Chorpenning Playwright Award (2016) honoring the canon of work she has created, the American Alliance For Theatre & Education...

Charles Fuller

Representative Plays:

Zooman and the Sign (1982)
A Soldier’s Play (1981 Pulitzer Prize Winner)
The Brownsville Raid (1976)

Bio:

Charles Fuller was born in Philadelphia. He achieved critical notice in 1969 with The Village: A Party. He later wrote plays for the Henry Street Settlement theatre and the Negro Ensemble Company in New York. His 1975 play The Brownsville Raid, won him critical acclaim. He won an Obie Award for Zooman and the Sign in 1980. His next work, A Soldier's Play, was a critical success,...

Caleen Jennings

Representative Plays:

Queens Girl in Africa (2018)
Queens Girl in the World (2015)
Classy Ass (2005)

Bio:

Caleen SInnette Jennings is a professor of Theatre at American University. She is also a faculty member of the Folger Shakespeare Library's Teaching Shakespeare Institute. She has 8 plays that have been published by Dramatic Publishing Company, and more whihc have been published in multiple anthologies. These plays include Elsewhere in Elsinore: The Unseen Women of Hamlet, Inns and Outs, Playing Juliet/...

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

Representative Plays:

Appropriate (2016 Pulitzer Prize Finalist)
Gloria (2015 Pulitzer Prize Finalist)
An Octoroon (2014)
Neighbors (2010)

Bio:

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins was born in Washington, D.C. on December 29, 1984. He graduated high school as Valedictorian and went on to study Anthropology at Princeton University from which he graduated in 2006. In 2007, he earned a Masters in Performance Studies from NYU. That same year he started work in the New Yorker's fiction...

Aziza Barnes

Representative Plays:

BLKS (2019)

Bio:

Aziza Banres is the winner of the 2015 Pamet River Prize; her first full length collection, i be but i ain’t, is from YesYes Books, 2016. Her first chapbook, me Aunt Jemima & the nailgun, was the inaugural winner of the Exploding Pinecone Prize from Button Poetry. She is a Cave Canem Fellow, co-founder of The Conversation Literary Festivaland co-host of the podcast, The Poetry Gods. Aziza is a graduate of New York University, member of The Dance Cartel and...

Aurin Squire

Representative Plays:

Zoohouse (2016)
To Whom It May Concern (2015)
Obama-ology (2014)

Bio:

Aurin Squire is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and reporter. He is a recipient of the 2014 Lecomte du Nouy Prize from Lincoln Center and the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwright Fellowship at The Juilliard School. In 2013 his drama Freefalling was produced at Barrington Stage Company and won the 2013 Fiat Lux Award from the Catholic Church’s Theatre Conference. In 2014 Squire won the...

August Wilson

Representative Plays:

The Piano Lesson (1987)
Fences (1985)
Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1984)
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1982)

Bio:

August Wilson, born Frederick August Kittel, Jr, was a renouned American playwright. In 1968, Wilson set up the Black Horizon Theater with Rob Penny where his first plays, Recycling and Jitney, were performed. In 1976 Sizwe Banzi is Dead – his first professional play – was performed at the Pittsburgh Public Theater....

Antoinette Nwandu

Representative Plays:

Pass Over (2017)

Bio:

Antoinette Nwandu is a New York-based playwright who was born and raised in Los Angeles. Her play Pass Over made its New York debut at LCT3/Lincoln Center in 2018. A filmed version of the Jeff Award-winning Steppenwolf production—directed by Spike Lee—premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and at SXSW, and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Victory Gardens produced the World Premiere of her play Breach: a manifesto on race in america through the eyes of a black girl recovering from...

Star Finch

Representative Plays:

Bondage (2018)
H.O.M.E. (Hookers On Mars Eventually) (2017)
Participants/Take the Ticket (2016)

Bio:

Star Finch is a native San Franciscan trying her best to hold ground amidst the Black-erasure of gentrification. She is currently the Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence at Campo Santo and Crowded Fire Theater. She’s also a resident playwright at Playwrights Foundation. Finch’s plays include H.O.M.E. [Hookers on Mars Eventually]and BONDAGE (Relentless Award honorable...