Kirya Traber

Kirya Traber (she/her/hers)

Kirya Traber is a writer, performer, and cultural organizer. She was a 2021 Hermitage Artist Retreat Fellow, a 2021 Djerassi Artist Residency Fellow, the Curator in Residence with Hi-ARTS from 2020-2023, New York Stage and Film’s 2020 Founders Award recipient, and Lincoln Center’s lead Community Artist in Residence from 2015-2020. Her collaborative work with Ping Chong + Company, Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ, was a NYTimes Critics Pick in 2018. Her work with First Person PBS received a NY Emmy Nomination in 2018. Her plays include: Both My Grandfathers (workshop, Lincoln Center in 2015), Ready or Not (formerly Lucky, development, NYSAF 2020), the musical If This Be Sin (development, Kennedy Center 2021), and Beyond Punishment: Stories of Justice and Healing (commissioned by Columbia Center for Justice 2023). Her debut novel, Ready or Not, will be published by Dutton Books. Kirya has received a Robert Redford’s Sundance Foundation award for Activism in the Arts.