Lucy Thurber

Lucy Thurber is the author of twelve plays, including: Where We’re Born, Ashville, Scarcity, Stay, The Insurgents, and Transfers. She helped create the COMMUNITY WORKS program at Williamstown Theatre Festival and her five-play cycle, The Hill Town Plays, was produced Off Broadway. Lucy is an alumnus of New Dramatists, a member of 13P, Labyrinth Theater Company, and Rising Phoenix Rep. She has been commissioned by Playwrights Horizons, Yale Rep, Williamstown Theatre Festival, A.C.T. and Steppenwolf. She is the recipient of Manhattan Theatre Club Playwriting Fellowship, the Gary Bonasorte Memorial Prize for Playwriting, a Lilly Award, an Obie Award, the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, and Off Broadway Alliance Award for Best Play 2018.

Erika Dickerson-Despenza

Erika Dickerson-Despenza is a Blk radical leftist writer, ecowomanist, and cultural memory worker. She is the creator and inaugural resident of The Ntozake Shange Social Justice Playwriting Residency at The Public Theater in partnership with Barnard College and the Shange Trust. Erika is the independent steward of The Daughters Table, a 14-acre regenerative organic farm in south Louisiana. Select Awards: PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award (2023), Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (2021), Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award (2020), Lilly Award (2020), Princess Grace Playwriting Award (2019). Productions: shadow/land (The Public Theater, 2023), cullud wattah (The Public Theater, 2021). Erika lives in New Orleans.

a.k. payne

a.k. payne (she/they) is a playwright and theatermaker with roots in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Their plays love on and engage Black lives and languages. They hold a B.A. in English and African-American Studies from Yale College and an MFA in Playwriting from Yale School of Drama. Their work has been finalist for the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award and a 2x finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. They are a grandchild of the Great Migration; a queer & non-binary abolitionist affected in community by the “New Jim Crow”; and of a great lineage of Black women storytellers and living-room archivists; all of which deeply informs, uplifts and amplifies their work as a playwright, community organizer and spacemaker. 

Lina Patel

Lina Patel is an actor, playwright, TV writer. Her plays explore power, non-traditional families, and disability and have been commissioned, developed, and produced across the country and the pond. She has held residencies at The New Harmony Project (2011, 2021) and Sewanee Writers Conference (Walter E. Dakin Fellow). In 2024, she is co-moderating the inaugural Playwright's Roundtable at Rogue Machine Theater in L.A. and her new play, Traces of Desire, will be published by Bloomsbury, U.K. On television, Lina co-produced Ava DuVernay's Cherish the Day; previously, DC's Krypton. She is currently developing her original mental health drama for BET Plus and a YA hybrid-animation project with Trioscope Studios.

Aurora Real de Asua

Aurora Real de Asua is a playwright, filmmaker, and performer. In 2024, her play Wipeout received a rolling world premiere through the New Play Network. Wet was part of the Scratchpad Series at the Playwright's Realm in 2022. Her work has been developed at the Manhattan Theatre Club, Williamstown Theatre Festival, The New Harmony Project, and the Old Globe. She is currently commissioned by MTC and South Coast Repertory Theatre. Her short film Heartsong debuted on Short of the Week and screened at various festivals. It is available to stream on Mitú.tv. Aurora holds a BA in Theatre from Northwestern University and an MFA in film from Columbia University.

Jessica Huang

Jessica Huang is a playwright and librettist whose work includes: Blended 和 (Harmony): The Kim Loo Sisters (with composer Jacinth Greywoode), Mother of Exiles (Venturous Award, Rosa Parks Playwriting Award, Paul Stephen Lim Playwriting Award), and The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin (Bernice Stavis Award). Her popular audioplay Song of the Northwoods is available on Audible. She is developing an original TV show with WBTV. Jessica is a Venturous Playwright Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center, a MacDowell Fellow, Hermitage Fellow and four-time Playwrights' Center fellow, and has been a member of Ars Nova Play Group, Civilians R&D Group and Page 73's Interstate 73. She is a graduate of Juilliard Playwrights Program.

Keiko Green

Keiko Green (she/her) is a playwright, screenwriter, and performer based out of Los Angeles and Seattle. Productions of her plays include: Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play (Old Globe; SF Playhouse - upcoming), The Bed Trick (Seattle Shakespeare Company), Hells Canyon (Theater Mu), Sharon (Cygnet Theatre), Hometown Boy (Actor's Express, Seattle Public Theater), and Nadeshiko (Sound Theatre Company). Her plays have been developed by the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, the Kennedy Center, National New Play Network, Playwrights Realm, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and Atlantic Theatre Company. TV: Upcoming Hulu series Interior Chinatown. BFA: NYU Drama - Experimental Theatre Wing, MFA: UCSD Playwriting.

Jordan Ramirez Puckett

Jordan Ramirez Puckett (they/them) is a Chicanx writer from the San Francisco Bay Area and a reccent graduate of the Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program. Jordan’s plays include A Sapphic Family Christmas, Transitional Love Stories, En Las Sombras, To Saints and Stars, A Driving Beat, Las Pajaritas, Restore, and Inevitable. These works have been produced and/or developed by Abingdon Theatre Company, Creede Repertory Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Harold Clurman Laboratory Theater Company, Playwrights Foundation, Playwrights Realm, San Diego Repertory Theatre, and San Francisco Playhouse, among others. Jordan was named a finalist for the prestigious 2022 Yale Drama Series Prize.