D.S.A. Deen is a first-generation South Asian-American writer, actor, and activist. He won the Dennis Johnston Playwriting Prize and the James Baldwin Award for his play Shut Up!. His writing includes the plays Butchus Homosexualis, Sikhandini, Barely Breathing (semi-finalist, Samuel French Festival of One-Acts), Saffron, Seven-Year Itch, and ...Tank & Horse (2007 Berkshire Fringe Festival) as well as the short film Pigeon Man. He holds an MFA from The Actors Studio Drama School.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' plays include Neighbors, Face #1-3, Thirst, Zoo, Heart!!!, and Content. With the performance duo enemyResearch, he created and performed in Garbage, Schnechnershirts, and The Amateurs. His work has been presented by Prelude '08, New York Theatre Workshop, PS122, McCarter Theatre, Dixon Place, Providence Black Repertory, Links Hall, and Soho Rep. A former NYTW Playwriting fellow and alumnus of the Hemispheric Institute's EMERGENYC Program, Branden is a member of the Soho Rep writers/directors lab and holds an MA in Performance Studies from NYU.
Bridget Kelso is a writer and actor who has performed on several prominent New York stages and around the world. As a member of the Creative Arts Team, she devised and implemented educational theater workshops in the New York City public schools, Her work, Symptoms of Liberty, dramatizes Nat Turner's famous slave rebellion while incorporating the traditional African techniques of call and response, storytelling, and spiritual co-existence. Bridget's current projects include a children's book series, a book of poetry, and a new play entitled A Little Bird Sings Freedom.
Mona Mansour's first play, Me and the SLA, was named "Best of the Fest" at Seattle's Fringe Festival. Her play Girl Scouts of America (co-written with Andrea Berloff) was presented as part of The Public's New Work Now! series and received a reading at New York Theatre Workshop; her play Others received a staged reading at The Flea. She has written episodes of Showtime's "Dead Like Me" and CBS's "Queens Supreme." She and Lisa Kron curated a piece for LGBT youth called ‘Nuff Said, which was performed at Dance Theater Workshop.
Vickie Ramirez is a founding member of Chukalokoli Native Theater Ensemble and Amerinda Theater. She co-created In the Spirit (Ensemble Studio Theater) with Edward Allan Baker. The first part of her Cornsoup Trilogy, Smoke, received a reading at The Public in partnership with Amerinda Theater and will receive a reading at BOO-Arts; she is currently at work on the second play in the trilogy, Ashes. She has written screenplays for MonkeyDog (which made it through the first rounds at The Sundance Institute in 2006), Lotto Munney, and Rachel vs. The Little Warriors.
Jordan Seavey is the author of The Truth Will Out, Townville, The Astronomer's Triangle (six New York Innovative Theatre Award nominations), The Trading Floor, This Is a Newspaper (FringeNYC Excellence Award), Dante's Inferno, 6969 (three NYIT awards), Children at Play, Ann Coulter: I'm Going To Blow Your Fucking Brains Out, Are You Writing From the Heart?, 69 Love Songs, American Child, and The Long Distance. He is a former Edward F. Albee Foundation fellow, two-time Robert Wilson Watermill Center fellow, and two-time LMCC grant recipient.
Alena Smith is a 2008-2009 NYFA Artists Fellow. Her plays include The Sacrifices, The Lacy Project (produced at A.R.T. Institute, the Ice Factory Festival, and Yale's Carlotta Festival of New Plays), Saturnalia in Poughkeepsie, Alice Eat Your Words, It or Her, and Apple of Discord. A finalist for the O'Neill Playwrights Conference and the Princess Grace Award, she was nominated by The Public for the Old Vic New Voices US/UK Exchange. She is the co-founder and resident playwright of Dead Genius Productions. She holds an MFA from the Yale School of Drama and received an ASCAP Cole Porter Prize in Playwriting.
Kevin Christopher Snipes' plays include A Bitter Taste, The Chimes, Small Gods, Party Lights and Hip-Skidoo. His work has been performed at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Orlando Shakespeare, Bailiwick Repertory, New York Stage & Film, Moving Arts, Luna Stage, the Hippodrome State Theatre (FLA), and in the Pittsburgh New Works Festival. His play Virgin Rock was published in The Best Plays of the Riant Strawberry One-Act Festival: Volume 3. A 2008 NYFA Artists Fellow, he has received the Larry Corse International Prize for Playwriting and an Alfred P. Sloan Screenwriting Fellowship. He holds an MFA from Carnegie Mellon.
Lauren Yee is a Dramatists Guild fellow. She is a recent Yale graduate and resident at MacDowell Colony and has received fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the Byrdcliffe Artist Colony, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, and the New York Mills Arts Retreat. Her upcoming play about commercial surrogacy in India is funded by the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation and Theatre Bay Area. Her play Ching Chong Chinaman was a finalist for the Princess Grace Award. She also won the Pacific Rim Prize, was named one of the top 10 plays of 2008 by the East Bay Express, and has been produced in Minneapolis, Berkeley, and New York.
