A Middle Passage by Yide Cai (蔡逸得)
Yide Cai (蔡逸得) is a poet, translator and award-winning playwright from Shenzhen, China whose work has been featured at the OOB Festival, La MaMa, The Tank, Kanini Fest and more. Yide also works internationally as a producer, director and dramaturg with credits including German National Theater Weimar, Prague Shakespeare Company and Chinese premieres of Dead Poets Society, The Book of Will and Lydia & The Troll. He is an MFA in Playwriting candidate at Boston University and holds a BA in Playwriting & German Studies from Emory University.

ALIFORNIA by Daniel Holzman
Daniel Holzman is a playwright from San Francisco. Recent work includes: Berlindia! (The Tank), Middle School Play (The Brick), OLIVES (Clubbed Thumb ECWG), and Me & Who (O’Neill Finalist).

archy and mehitabel one last time by J.R. Stephens
J.R. Stephens is a New England-based playwright whose work explores mortality, memory and human connection through characters poised at life’s thresholds and navigating the pull of change. An active member of the Dramatists Guild of America, his plays include Testament of the Body (Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival), A Quiet Light (10:4:TENN; Sharon Playhouse) and Sunset from the Atlantis (National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences). In addition to writing, Stephens is a performer, educator and librarian, all of which inform his interest in storytelling, history and the preservation of overlooked voices.

Bump –> Set –> Spike –> Bruise by Diana Lobontiu
Diana Lobontiu (they) is a Romanian-American playwright, actor, educator and former HS varsity volleyball player(!). They explore the intersections of masculinity, dominance + oppression, and loneliness. MFA Brooklyn College. dianalobontiu.com

Godbird by Nurit Chinn
Nurit Chinn is a playwright from London currently based in Brooklyn. Her plays have been developed at the Alliance Theatre, BAM, the Center for New Jewish Culture, the Royal Court Theatre and others. She is a 2024/25 New Jewish Culture Fellow, a 2025 Alliance/Kendeda finalist and the Playwright-in-Residence at Centro Primo Levi, where she is also under commission. Nurit is the Co-Director of Exponential Festival 2026. MFA: Brooklyn College, Playwriting.

SEARCH ENGINE by Raffi Donatich
Raffi Donatich is a writer and performer. Her feature screenplay Poetic License recently wrapped production with Maude Apatow directing; Cooper Hoffman, Andrew Barth Feldman and Leslie Mann star. She is currently staffed on LuckyChap and Fake Empire’s Sterling Point, created by Megan Park for Amazon. She is also developing a TV series entitled Sex Act with Jeremy O. Harris and Lena Dunham producing under her Good Thing Going banner. Previously, she worked on Jeremy O. Harris’ plays Slave Play (NYTW, Broadway) and Daddy (Almeida). In 2020, she was awarded Yale University’s Frederick Mortimer Clapp Fellowship for Poetry.

A Neo-Vagina Monologue by Aster Aguilar
Aster Aguilar (she/her) is a playwright from Wilbraham, Massachusetts — which is unfortunately more similar to Connecticut than Boston. She has been supported by the Solomon Fellowship for LGBT Studies and a Silliman Creative and Performing Arts Award. BA: Yale University.

Pilloried by Jillian Blevins
Jillian Blevins is a New England-based playwright and theatre artist whose plays have been performed in cities across the country, including Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, New Haven, Providence, Orlando, Portland and New York City. Proud member of the Dramatists Guild.

A Mercy at Midnight Castle by Phillip Gregory Burke
Phillip Gregory Burke (he/him) is a Black American of Haitian, Creole and Gullah-Geechee descent, artivist, actor and playwright. MA: Classical and Contemporary Text, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. BFA: Drama, BS: Sociology – Syracuse University.

Data Queen by Adam Ashraf Elsayigh
Cairo-born and Dubai-raised, Adam Ashraf Elsayigh’s childhood entwined a Muslim Egyptian home, American cable and British schooling in a migrant-majority city. This upbringing at the cross-section of cultures is at the core of the stage and teleplays Adam writes today, which dramatize modern people navigating themes of queerness, labor and class across borders, all with a pinch of comedic camp.

Beethoven’s Third by Howard Ho
Howard Ho is a playwright/composer. His YouTube channel dissecting musicals has over 120,000 subscribers and was recognized by Lin-Manuel Miranda. His journalism has been published in Entertainment Weekly, LA Times, Howlround and American Theatre magazine.

A Definitive Ranking of my Closest Friends by Jay Stalder
Jay Stalder (he/him) is a writer and actor living in Los Angeles, CA. A Definitive Ranking of my Closest Friends was also adapted into a short film of the same name (Independent Shorts Award; Dumbo Film Festival in Brooklyn, NY). Jay studied Acting at Webster Conservatory.

18 by Darius M. Buckley
Darius M. Buckley is a dramatist, published author, performing artist and native Detroiter. He studied Broadcast and Cinematic Arts at Central Michigan University and is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Playwriting at Columbia University. A few of his playwriting credits include: The Fly & Incredibly Dope Adventures of Tyrone Jenkins: A Detroit Hip Hop Musical (CMU and the Detroit Fringe Festival), Thin Places (115 Short Play Festival) and The Bridge (Columbia University). Darius has also written and directed films such as: The DEFY Film, 5: A Visual Poem, American Thriller, Wonder Boy and Making Tyrone: A 1VK1 Mini Documentary. His literary publications include Wonder Boy: A Science Fiction Short, Only The Golden Sky Knows and his first novella, HAZE: Book One. His calling is to write soulful black stories that inform, inspire and heal. Stories that embody the pain, joy and magic of young black voices.

Nub City, USA! by Nicholas Hulstine
Nicholas Hulstine is a Louisville, Kentucky based theatre artist. On stage he’s appeared in Tuesday Night Poker (Theatre Row), Foreign Gothic (FringeNYC), The Dazzle (John Cullum Theater), The Flick (The Alley Theater) and Nobody Bunny and the Golden Age of Animation (Theatre 502). Film credits include My Friend Dahmer, Above Suspicion, The Art of Self Defense, Chopin, Runner and Great Light. His plays include Happyouth (Gene Frankel Theatre), The Track N’ Hole (Prologue Theatre, Chicago), Blue Scatters Most (The Secret Theatre) and The Geography of Nowhere (The Chain Theatre). He’s the co-founder of the Louisville Fringe Festival. Education: The American Musical and Dramatic Academy, BA The New School, MFA in Playwriting Spalding University.

The Velociraptor’s Very Good Day by Sarah ‘Sair’ Kaufman and Shane Dittmar
Sair and Shane (They & Them) are a disabled, nonbinary writing team with ambition to broaden the accessibility of musical theatre to be more inclusive of the disabled community. They & Them were finalists in the 2022 Write Out Loud songwriting competition and recipients of the 2022 Danny Award for Original Song. The 10-minute musical they wrote for the Prospect Musical Theatre Lab – The Velociraptor’s Very Good Day, a piece about dinosaurs and autistic joy – was also selected for the 2023 SoundBites X Festival by Theatre Now New York. They are both a part of the BMI Musical Theatre Writer’s Workshop. Their flagship project is a D&D-inspired fantasy musical podcast called The Reality Shaper (therealityshaper.com) that they are currently developing. A song from the project called “The Non-Binary Song” went viral, and the pilot episode of the podcast is available on your podcast app of choice!

Dugout Daisies by Julissa Mishay Norment
Julissa Mishay Norment is a dynamic and inventive award-winning playwright, bookwriter and lyricist that strives to create and diversify theatrical experiences, primarily through a Black, Queer and Feminist lens. Julissa is currently an Abbott Musical Theater Collaboration MFA Candidate at Temple University.

DRAWBRIDGE by Mallory Jane Weiss
Mallory Jane Weiss grew up in New Jersey, where she went down the shore and ate Taylor ham. She continues to do those things and writes plays in Brooklyn. Select plays include Big Black Sunhats (Great Plains Theatre Commons New Play Conference 2023; The O’Neill National Playwrights Conference 2022; Clubbed Thumb Biennial Commission finalist 2020), Lights Out and Away We Go (The O’Neill NPC finalist 2023; Clubbed Thumb reading 2022), The Page Turners (Clauder Competition Gold Prize 2023; Princess Grace Award semi-finalist 2022; The O’Neill NPC finalist 2021), Pony Up (Princess Grace Award Finalist, 2019) and Dave and Julia Are Stuck in a Tree (Playing on Air’s James Stevenson Prize 2020). Mallory is an alumna of Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers’ Group (2021-2022), The COOP’s Clusterf**k (2021), Gingold Theatrical Group’s Speakers Corner (2018-2019) and Fresh Ground Pepper’s BRB Retreat (2019). B.A.: Harvard University, M.F.A.: The New School.

Freestyle Hand Entry by Elise Wien
Elise Wien is a writer who likes to make her plays like cakes – with a frosting of slapstick comedy, a moist inner layer of complex emotional landscape and a molten core of ethical dilemma (OPEN WIDE). Her plays include Osher & The Infinite Curtain (Residency, VoxLab), OTP (Production, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre), [cowboy face] (Winner, Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for Comic Playwriting; Finalist, Leah Ryan Fund for Emerging Women Writers), Craters, or the making of the making of the moon landing (Production, Smith College; Reading, Corkscrew Theater Festival). She is a recent graduate of Boston University’s Playwriting MFA program.

Too Much Lesbian Drama: One Star by Jessie Field
Jessie Field (she/her) is an award-winning queer NYC playwright and director. She has written book and/or lyrics for numerous projects including Charlotte Lucas is 27 and Not Dead (Winner: Musicals Now Competition, O’Neill NMTC Semi-Finalist, SDSU Semi-Finalist), Madam President (workshopped at the New Musicals Lab at Ferguson Center), Ren Faire (being developed with Theatre Now), La Maupin (Winner: 2018 International MUT Competition, Winner: Audience Favorite – 2017 Fresh Fruit Festival) and Rachel (2018 JDT Lab Selection, Winner: Outstanding Musical – 2015 Fresh Fruit Festival, 2013 Harold and Mimi Steinberg Prize for Best Original Play). Jessie has also written the TYA straight play To The West, which was a finalist in the Growing Stage’s New Play Reading Festival and the school play at Randolph High. Jessie is a co-creator (with James Salem) of the musical webseries “Is This Art Now?” and she earned her MFA at NYU Tisch’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program.

Chemistry by Ben Holbrook
Ben Holbrook is a Brooklyn-based (originally from NC) playwright and filmmaker whose works have been produced, developed or commissioned by: Fundamental Theater Project, Ruddy Productions, The New York International Fringe Festival, The Memphis Fringe Festival, The Motor Company, Voices of the South (TN), Ugly Rhino (LA), Seoul Players (SK), Holiday House, Find the Light (LA), The Irish Arts Council, 45th Street Block Association and Paper Lantern Theatre Company (NC). He’s been awarded the Edward Albee Foundation fellowship, the Drama League Rough Draft Residency (partnering with Sam Underwood), The Williamstown Theatre Festival residency, Fresh Ground Pepper’s Playground Playgroup Residency, the Wildwind Performance Lab residency, The New Concepts Theatre Lab at UNC-Greensboro, Magic Time at Judson Church, and is the inaugural recipient of the Peter Shaffer Award for Excellence in Playwriting. More info at baholbrook.com.

Georgia Rose by Onyekachi Iwu
Onyekachi Iwu is a Nigerian-American playwright, director and filmmaker from Nashville, TN. She is a member of the American Theatre Group Playlab, 2020-2022 and Eden Theater Company Playlab, 2020. Her plays have also been developed and performed with the Classical Theatre of Harlem (Where is Nina Mae?), Two Strikes Theatre Collective (Georgia Rose), Conchshell Productions (Ants and Garlic) and Columbia University (Cotton Harris). Her full-length play, The Magical South, was a finalist for the Leah Ryan Fund for Emerging Women Writers in 2020 and the Crossroads Diverse Voices Playwriting Initiative in 2021. She was also a finalist for UCROSS+The Blank Theatre’s 2022 Future of Playwriting Prize. Iwu’s work explores themes of Black love, Black womanhood, communal healing and radical escapism.

Bugs by Alex Moon
Alex Moon (Pronouns: they/he) is a genderqueer theatre artist and translator who’s worked with organizations such as The American Repertory Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Speakeasy Stage Co, Boston University, Emerson College, Theatre Collaborative and more. Recently, their play G-Town was a finalist for the 2021 Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Ari + Dee was produced by Broke People Play Festival and The Chain Theatre, and their short play HANOI JANE PISS TARGET was selected as part of the 46th Annual Samuel French Off Off Broadway Festival. Their recent translations of The Homeric Hymns to Dionysus will be featured in the forthcoming spring issue of Persephone: The Harvard Undergraduate Classics Journal. They are a member of New York University’s class of 2022, double majoring in Dramatic Writing Classics, as well as training with the Yale School of Drama, Frantic Assembly and One Year Lease’s Apprentice Program in Papingo, Greece.

Shark Week by Erika Phoebus
Erika Phoebus is a NYC-based playwright/performer who often writes magical, messy plays about body stuff and autonomy. Her work has been developed and/or produced at New Ohio Theatre, Fresh Ground Pepper BRB Retreat, The Flamboyán Theater, So-Fi Festival co-produced with Torn Page, Theatre 4the People, Actors Theatre of NY, and with Tessa Faye Talent, and her play RUSALKA won 5 Planet Connections Awards at the 2018 Planet Connections Theatre Festival, including Best Production and Best Script. B.F.A. Creative Writing, Brooklyn College. William Esper Meisner Conservatory alumni. Dramatist Guild Member. For more info, or to just say hi, check out www.erikaphoebus.com; IG: @ephoebs.

If All That You Take From This Is Courage, Then I’ve No Regrets by Nicholas Pilapil
Nicholas Pilapil is a Filipino-American playwright. His work has been developed with Artists at Play, IAMA Theatre Company, Playwrights Foundation, Theatre Rhinoceros, The Fountain Theatre, The Vagrancy and Victory Gardens, among others. His play The Bottoming Process has been read at Victory Gardens’ Ignite Chicago Festival of New Plays, IAMA Theatre Company’s Under 30 Lab Series and was a finalist with honorable mention at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Nicholas is a member of The Writers’ Room at the Geffen Playhouse, and is an alum of the IAMA Theatre Under 30 Playwrights Lab, The Vagrancy Playwrights Group, Playground-LA and artEquity.

By Grace, Pt. 2 by Agyeiwaa Asante
Agyeiwaa Asante is an Ghanaian-American theatre artist based in Maryland. Her plays include, Swirl (Kennedy Center’s Page-to-Stage Festival 2017, Watermelon One-Act Festival – Best Production 2019), Help Wanted (Silver Spring One Act Festival, Elemental Women Productions) and Dainty (BOLD NYC’s 2020 Festival). Her short play Wildest Dreams will premiere at the 13th Annual Fire This Time Festival. Most recently she was commissioned for UMD’s NextNow Festival and Single Carrot Theatre and is the 2020 recipient of The Bret Adams and Paul Reisch Foundation’s Ollie Award for emerging playwrights. Agyeiwaa is the current Casting Director at Round House Theatre and a member of D.C. Dramatists. B.A. in Theatre from the University of Maryland.

All Things Considered, It Was Probably the Most Productive Meeting The Escondido Unified School District PTA Ever Had by A.J. Ditty
A.J. Ditty is an actor/playwright/slash-mark enthusiast currently living in Brooklyn. His plays include B.B.’s Inferno (The PIT, dir. Tom Costello and Felicia Lobo), Eloise Parker Goes to the Moon (Crashbox Theater’s Read. Play. Write. series, dir. Kristin McCarthy Parker), Heart of Duckness (Pipeline Theater Company’s Bonfire series, dir. Kevin Hourigan), and Rubiella: A Ghost Story (Pipeline’s Matchstick series, dir. Felicia Lobo). He is a proud alumnus of Pipeline Theater Company’s PlayLab and is currently a member of Decent Company, which is a collective dedicated to the advancement of the theatrical writer/performer.

DOGS OF SOCIETY by Julia Grogan
Julia Grogan is a writer-actor from London, England. Julia trained as an actor at Rose Bruford College, graduating in 2018. Shortly after graduating, she was invited to join the Royal Court Intro Writers’ Group. As a result, she wrote Playfight, her first play. The play won the ETPEP Award 2020 and was shortlisted for the Theatre Uncut Award, Papatango Award and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Playwriting. Julia co-wrote dark historical comedy Belly Up, which premiered at the Vault Festival 2020 and will be performed at the Turbine Theatre later this year. She is currently working on a new pitch-black comedy Dark Side of June. Acting work includes: At Sea (BBC Radio 4), Belly Up (VAULT), Island Town (Catalyst Festival). Julia is represented by Alec Drysdale at Independent Talent.

Grieved. by Jahquale Mazyck
Jay Mazyck (he/they) is a Black queer creative from Brooklyn, NY. They starred in the off-Broadway production of Chisa Hutchinson’s Surely Goodness and Mercy (Keen Company) as well as Michelle Tyrene Johnson’s radio play Buried Roots. A reading of their first full length play, MAD, was included in the 2019 season of Corkscrew Theater Festival and they were one of the seven playwrights award commission in the 11th season of the Obie Award-winning Fire This Time Festival. Their short play If Men Were Flowers premiered on the streaming platform All-Star in 2020. Their short play Dude premiered at the 2020 Frigid Queerly Festival and The Reparations Show produced by Kevin R. Free. Mazyck is an alum of the prestigious Royal Court Theaters Writers Group in London and is currently a BTU Rise Fellow in partnership with Black Theatre United and Williamstown Theater Festival, as well as a 2021-2022 SoulCenter Fellow.

pearl apple penguin by Aisling Towl
Aisling is a poet, playwright and facilitator from South London. She has performed at venues across London and the U.K. including Richmix, Freeword Centre and Brainchild Festival, and for organizations including Sofar Sounds and Merky Books. Her play Godfrey was longlisted for the Royal Court’s Lynne Gagliano Award in 2019 and had a sold-out run at VAULT Festival 2020. Aisling is an alumnus of the Royal Court Playwrighting Group and the Apples and Snakes Writing Room.

Kitchen Design by Suzanne Willett
Suzanne is a Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Bridge Award, Women’s Works Short Play Lab and Fresh Ground Pepper Play Ground Play Group Finalist. NY Productions: Life (Players Theatre, 2019), Chaos/Absolute Zero (Players Theatre, 2018), Rock, Paper, Scissors (Arctic Fridge Fest, 2017), Wonder Company (Dixon Place, 2017) Fall Pieces, a collection of experimental shorts (Dixon Place 2015); Tompkins ’88, a play about the Tompkins Square Part Riot in 1988 (Metropolitan Playhouse 2015); Robert McIntyre, a man’s struggle with his paralyzed hand (Manhattan Rep 2014). MFA in Playwriting, Hollins University. Member: Dramatist Guild, 29th St. Playwrights Collective.

Voir Dire by Carissa Atallah
Carissa Atallah is a writer and scholar from sunny Southern California. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing for the Performing Arts with an emphasis in Playwriting from the University of California Riverside. Her plays have been performed in venues including The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC, the Historic Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles and the Complex Theater in Hollywood. Learn more at carissaatallah.com.

Masking Our Blackness by Vincent Terrell Durham
Vincent Terrell Durham is a playwright who first honed his storytelling skills as a stand-up comic in comedy clubs across the country. He is a 2019 National New Play Network finalist and Eugene O’Neill semifinalist for his powerful new play Polar Bears, Black Boys & Prairie Fringed Orchids. Vincent confronts what it means to be Black in America with clarity, irony and humor. His voice as a proud gay man of color is fresh, compelling and his marksmanship for piercing the soul of a theater audience is unerring. He goes unflinchingly to the heart of the matter and pulls no punches. Vincent writes to pay honor to the Johnson family. The best storytellers a little Black boy could ever have.

i didn’t think you’d be so unhappy by Shara Feit
Shara Feit is a playwright-performer-dramaturg from New York who makes sad/funny plays about messy, virtuosic, queer women+. Her work has been developed by Pipeline Theatre Company, Geva Theatre Center, Williamstown Theatre Festival’s Professional Training Program, G45 Productions, Rule of 7×7 at The Tank, Barn Arts, The Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival, The Sewanee Writers’ Conference (2019 Romulus Linney Scholar) and The 24 Hour Plays, among others. Shara’s play little lives was a finalist for the 2019 National Playwrights Conference and she was selected for a 2020 Bronx Council on the Arts BRIO Award, recognizing outstanding Bronx-based artists. BA: Northwestern University, Agnes Nixon Award for Playwriting.

The Falling Man by Gethsemane Herron-Coward
Gethsemane Herron‐Coward is a playwright from Washington, D.C. She has developed work with JAG Productions, The Flea, The Hearth, Magic Time @ Judson, The Ice Factory Festival at the New Ohio Theatre, Playwright’s Playground at Classical Theatre of Harlem, The Fire This Time Festival and Ars Nova, where she is a Resident Artist with Ars Nova’s Play Group. Additional residencies from The Liberation Theater Company, Virginia Center of the Creative Arts, VONA and the Millay Colony, where she was the recipient of the Yasmin Scholarship. Semi-finalist for the Princess Grace Playwriting Fellowship and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Finalist for Space on Ryder Farm’s Creative Residency, the Dennis and Victoria Roth Playwright’s Program and the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award. MFA: Columbia University. Proud member of the Dramatist’s Guild. She’s enamored with Sailor Moon, witches and other magical girl warriors. She writes for survivors.

CRUSH! by Krista Knight
Krista is a Juilliard School Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program Fellow (2016-2018), Page 73 Playwriting Fellow (2007), MacDowell Fellow (2008), Shank Playwriting Fellow at the Vineyard Theatre (2011-2012), Vanderbilt Writer-in-Residence (2020), the Chance Theater Resident Playwright (2020) and winner of the Heideman Award at Actors Theatre of Louisville (2016). Plays include Lipstick Lobotomy (2019 Kilroys List, Trap Door Theatre), Don’t Stop Me (musical with Dave Malloy), Kirk at the SF Airport Hyatt (NYTW’s Summer Residency, Vineyard reading), Primal Play (New Georges), Selkie (Williamstown Theatre Festival, Dutch Kills) and 17 plays and musicals for young audiences. Commissions include the script for a ride at Tokyo Disney, The Berkeley Rep School of Theatre, The Assembly, Live Girls!, the Steinmetz Lab and an EST/Sloan Commission (2020). BA: Brown University. MA: Performance Studies from NYU. MFA Playwriting: UCSD. www.KristaKnight.com

Slow Jam by Caity-Shea Violette
Caity-Shea Violette is a national award-winning and internationally produced playwright. Her plays include Target Behavior (Kennedy Center’s National Partners of the American Theatre Playwriting Excellence Award Winner, The Lark’s Shakespeare’s Sister Playwriting Fellowship Semifinalist), Reap the Grove (O’Neill Theatre Conference Semifinalist), Credible (Blue Ink Playwriting Award Semifinalist), Slow Jam (Kennedy Center’s Gary Garrison National Ten-Minute Play Award Winner), The Stand (Susan Glaspell Playwriting Festival National Award Winner) and others. She is a member of Dramatists Guild of America and was named part of ADA 25 Advancing Leadership’s 2017 Fellows Class, a program for emerging leaders with disabilities who are committed to creating change. Caity-Shea is a Midwestern native who earned her BFA in Acting at University of Minnesota, Duluth and is a graduate of the St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists. She currently resides in Boston where she is completing her MFA in Playwriting at Boston University. More at www.caitysheaviolette.com.