African American & Black

Nilaja Sun

Representative Plays:

Pike Street (2017)
No Child... (2006)
Black and Blue (2001)

Bio:

Nilaja Sun is a teaching artist, writer and performer from New York City's Lower East Side. Sun describes herself as a product of many cultural influences: her mother is Puerto Rican, her biological father is African American, her mother re-married to an Italian man, and her childhood neighborhood contained all of these cultures and more. Sun studied pre-medicine at Franklin & Marshall College and in her senior year,...

Marcus Gardley

Representative Plays:

House That Will Not Stand (2014)
Every Tongue Confess (2010)

Bio:

Marcus Gardley is a poet-playwright. He was the 2012 James Baldwin Fellow and the 2011 PEN Laura Pels award winner for Mid-Career Playwright. The New Yorker describes Gardley as “the heir to Garcia Lorca, Pirandello and Tennessee Williams.” His play The House that Will Not Stand was commissioned and produced by Berkeley Rep and had subsequent productions at Yale Rep and the Tricycle Theater in London. He is an ensemble member...

Lynn Nottage

Representative Plays:

Sweat (2015)
Ruined (2009)
Intimate Apparel (2004)

Bio:

Lynn Nottage is a playwright and a screenwriter. She is the only woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice. Her plays have been produced widely in the United States and throughout the world. Her plays include Sweat (Pulitzer Prize, Obie Award, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Tony Nomination, Drama Desk Nomination), This is Reading, Floyd’s, Mlima’s Tale, By The Way, Meet Vera Stark (Lilly...

Lorraine Hansberry

Representative Plays:

Les Blancs (1970)
To Be Young, Gifted and Black (1968)
The Sign In Sidney Brustein’s Window (1965)
The Drinking Gourd (1960)
A Raisin in the Sun (1959)

Bio:

When Lorraine Hansberry’s (1930-1965) A Raisin in the Sun appeared on Broadway in 1959, the artist became at twenty-nine the youngest American playwright, the fifth woman, and the only African American to date to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play of the Year. The play...

Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka)

Representative Plays:

A Black Mass (1966)
The Dutchman and The Slave (1964)

Bio:

LeRoi Jones (aka Amiri Baraka) was a poet, writer, political activist and teacher. He was born in 1934, in Newark, New Jersey. He graduated from Howard University in 1953, and published his first major book of poetry, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, in 1961. He founded Totem Press in 1958, which first published works by Kerouac, Ginsberg and other lesser-known writers of the time period. Jones was also an...

Korde Arrington Tuttle

Representative Plays:

Graveyard Shift (2018)
clarity (2016)

Bio:

Korde Arrington Tuttle (Playwright) is a multi-disciplinary artist from Charlotte, NC. His work has been seen at Ojai Playwrights Conference, The Fire This Time Festival, HomeBase Theatre Collective, The Movement Theatre Company, 2015’s AfroFuturism Conference and The Tenth Magazine. Tuttle is a recipient of the Steinberg Playwriting Fellowship and a finalist for both 2017 Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Contest and City...

Kia Corthron

Representative Plays:

A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick (2010)
Seeking the Genesis (2002)
Breath Boom (2000)

Bio:

Kia Corthron was born and raised in Cumberland, Maryland. Corthron attended Frostburg State College and the University of Maryland in College Park, did a bit of editing in the D.C. area for a while, then relocated to New York City to earn her masters in Theatre Arts at Columbia University.

Among the theatres that have premiered her plays are Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre...

Keelay Gipson

Representative Plays:

#NewSlaves (2017)
What I Tell You in the Dark (2016)

Bio:

Keelay Gipson is a multi-disciplinary artist including work as an actor, filmmaker, director and award-winning playwright. His play, What I Tell You in the Dark, was recently selected as a Premiere Stages Playwriting Festival Finalist. His work as a playwright has been seen at the Wild Project, Poetic Theater Productions, HERE Arts Center, 133rd Street Arts Center, The Theater at Alvin Ailey, Tom Noonan's Paradise Factory...

Jordan E. Cooper

Representative Plays:

Ain’t No Mo (2019)

Bio:

Jordan E. Cooper is an award-winning playwright who lives in Brooklyn and is currently obtaining his BFA degree at The New School For Drama. His last play Black Boy Fly was voted 'Best New Play' by BroadwayWorld.Com. He can be seen starring in the critically acclaimed feature film WOLF, which is now available on Amazon and iTunes. His musical Alice Wonder premiered in concert previously this year at 54 Below.

Source:...

Jonathan Norton

Representative Plays:

My Tidy List of Terrors (2011)
penny candy (2010)

Bio:

Jonathan Norton is a playwright and theater-maker based in Dallas,Texas. His work has been produced or developed by Dallas Theater Center, PlayPenn, InterAct Theatre Company, Pyramid Theatre Company, Black and Latino Playwrights Conference, Bishop Arts Theatre Center, Kitchen Dog Theater, Undermain Theatre, South Dallas Cultural Center, the National Performance Network, and the National New Play Network. Jonathan’s play Mississippi Goddamn was a...