Jaime Lozano

Jaime Lozano is a Mexican multi-hyphenate musical theatre storyteller considered by Lin-Manuel Miranda as the “next big thing” on Broadway. American Theatre Wing’s Jonathan Larson Grant 2022. Joe’s Pub Working Group 2020-2022. The Civilians R&D Group 2020-2021. JACK Resident Artist 2021. Lincoln Center Resident Artist 2023. Selected works: El Otro Oz -formerly The Yellow Brick Road- (Off-Broadway & National Tour), Carmen La Cubana (European Tour), Children of Salt (NYMF 2016 “Best of Fest” Production), A Never-Ending Line (Comédie Nation in Paris, France & OffBroadway), Savage (UAB at Birmingham), Present Perfect (Live & In Color), Desaparecidas (JACK). Albums: “A Never-Ending Line,” “Jaime Lozano and the Familia: Songs by an Immigrant” released by Broadway Records. Film: “In The Heights” (orchestrations), “Tick, Tick… Boom!” (cameo in Broadway composers scene). His project “Jaime Lozano & The Familia” has performed sold out concerts at prestigious venues such as Joe’s Pub, 54 Below, The Green Room 42, Two River Theater, and more recently as part of the prestigious Lincoln Center’s American Songbook Series. His anticipated new album “Songs by an Immigrant Vol. 2” was released by Grammy Award winner label Concord Theatrical Recordings. Currently working on “Broadway en Spanglish” album, Roja, Desaparecidas and Frida, The Musical. He is part of the faculty of The New School and Berklee NYC. BFA: Music & Composition, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León; MFA: NYU/Tisch, Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program (Full Tuition Scholarship.) He was part of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. Proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America, AFM Local 802, BMI and GRAMMY and Latin GRAMMY voting member. Mi Henrucha hermosa, mi Alonzo y Ely Aimé. TE AMO. TODO. SIEMPRE. jaimelozano.net IG: @jaimelozano

Fouad Dakwar

Fouad Dakwar is a Palestinian musical theater writer whom Playbill aptly describes as “a darkly comic pop-punk composer on the rise.” His semi-autobiographical musical, ‘Fouad of Nazareth,’ was developed in Berklee NYC’s Writing and Production for Musical Theater Master’s program and premiered at Joe’s Pub to two sold-out concert fundraisers followed by a 29-hour reading presentation in Noor Theatre’s Highlight Reading Series.

Fouad has been a featured artist on the Playbill Songwriter Series and was a 2023 Jonathan Larson Grant finalist, 2023 Ars Nova CAMP finalist, 2024 Yes And… Laughter Lab finalist, 2023 and 2024 National Music Theater Conference semi-finalist, and 2024 Live & In Color semi-finalist. (Suffice it to say, he’s pretty damn grateful he made it past the finalist round this time!)

Fouad is also a proud member of the Joe’s Pub Council and has been an invited speaker at the Public Theater, NYU Tisch Dramatic Writing program, and the Game Devs of Color Expo.

In addition to his writing career, Fouad has supported the next generation of artists as Assistant Director for the New York Youth Symphony’s Musical Theater Songwriting program, a volunteer composer for the 52nd Street Project, and a Post-Graduate Fellow at Berklee NYC where he now works full time as the resident Admissions and Enrollment Officer.

You can find Fouad on Instagram and TikTok (@notfouad) where his satirical content has garnered over 5 million likes.

Ari Afsar

Ari Afsar (she/her) is a Bangladeshi-American mixed race singer, songwriter, and storyteller who believes in the power of art changing culture, and culture changing policy. A graduate of Ethnomusicology from UCLA, Afsar released her album, WE WON’T SLEEP, distributed by Sony Masterworks. She just finished her commission as an Artivist Fellow as a composer/lyricist for the Tony-award winning Broadway Advocacy Coalition. This past summer she was selected for Groundfloor at Berkeley Rep with her new musical THAT GIRL, book writer: Rehana Lew Mirza. Her work has been commissioned/featured at the La Jolla Playhouse, McCarter Theatre (commissioning I & YOU: THE MUSICAL with book writer: Lauren Gunderson), Clarence Brown Theatre at UTK (developing comedy-musical TEACHER OF THE YEAR), and NMTC at the O’Neill, where she won the 2019 Georgia Bogardus Holof Lyricist Award for JEANNETTE (book writer Lauren Gunderson & Jordan Ealey). Afsar has opened for Michelle Obama, Kamala Harris, Gloria Steinhem, and Hillary Clinton and will be making her Joe’s Pub Solo Show debut November 7 2024 featuring music across her discography. She starred in the top 10 Netflix movie WEDDING SEASON, composed with Pasek & Paul for Shawn Mendez in Sony’s LYLE LYLE CROCODILE, originated Eliza in Chicago’s HAMILTON, starred in the world premiere of BHANGIN’ IT at La Jolla Playhouse, awarded top 10 at MISS AMERICA as Miss California, and placed top 36 on AMERICAN IDOL. She is currently an MPA candidate at NYU Wagner. www.ariafsar.com @ariannaafsar

Jen Diamond

Jen Diamond is a playwright, screenwriter, and very chill girl. She writes spooky, funny plays about friendship, girlhood, and the performance of self.

Some of her plays for the stage include PAGEANT PLAY (Finalist, National Playwrights Conference 2024), THE BAD GUY (Workshops at Firehouse Theatre and The Barter Theatre; Appalachian Festival of Plays & Playwrights), PORN: A LOVE STORY (Honorable Mention, Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards; Commissioned by Cohesion Theatre Company), THE ALIBI PLAY (Baltimore Theatre Project; Recipient of the Maryland State Arts Council Creativity Grant), and HERE WE ARE (Kennedy Center/Page-to-Stage; Interrobang Theatre).

Jen is a current Woodward Resident. She has been a Finalist for SPACE on Ryder Farm’s Come to the Table Residency and The Bechdel Project’s ROO Residency; a Semi-Finalist for the Terrence McNally New Works Incubator; a Wright-Right-Now Playwright at Baltimore Center Stage; and a Finalist for the City Theatre National Award. Her original TV pilot, co-written with Pam Hugi, won the Austin Film Festival’s Warner Bros. Entertainment Pilot Award.

Other work has been presented or developed at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Dixon Place, Good Apples Collective, The Brick Aux, City Theatre Miami, American Lives Theatre, The Tank, and others.

Jen holds a B.A. in Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University and a MFA in Playwriting from Hunter College. www.jen-diamond.com

Emma Ashford

Emma Ashford (she/her) is a multidisciplinary writer, composer, and performer originally from California. A graduate of the University of Michigan’s B.F.A Musical Theatre program with a Minor in Musical Theatre Composition, Emma loves to tell uniquely American stories with her pen and piano, raising a mirror to our culture with humor, heart, and (often) a dark wit. Recently, Emma’s show HEARTBEATS (for which she wrote book, music, and lyrics) was selected as a Semi-Finalist at the O’Neill National Musical Theatre Conference for both 2023 & 2024, along with having its first industry reading in May. Additionally, two of Emma’s songs from the movie-musical 1660 VINE (directed by NYTW’s Patricia McGregor) received Awards of Excellence at the IndieFEST Film Festival 2023, as well as Best Original Song at the Vegas Movie Awards 2023 & The Indie Filmmaker Awards 2024 (1660 VINE is now available through MTI). Emma’s compositions have been supported by the Songbyrd Organization, and have been performed all over NYC, including venues such as The Musical Theatre Factory, The Green Room 42, Chelsea Table & Stage, 54 Below, and the Brooklyn Comedy Collective. She is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild, ASCAP, AEA, and SAG-AFTRA.

Phillip Christian Smith

Phillip Christian Smith is a Black Queer member of New Dramatists 2023-2030, Sloan Commission 2024-2025, Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow 2024-2025, a Fire This Time Festival Playwright, Fresh Ground Pepper PGPG, a Tennessee Williams Scholar at Sewanee (current staff), Playwrights Realm and Lambda Literary Fellow, Winter Playwrights Retreater. O’Neill, PlayPenn, Trustus, and BAPF Finalist. Florida Rep PlayLab, Valdez conference. CoLiterary Director of Exquisite Corpse Company. He teaches acting at Pace University and Hunter College where he has also taught playwriting. He has directed The Motherf**ker with the Hat at Matthew Corzine Studio Theatre and his play The Chechens at Pace University. BFA UNM, MFA Yale School of Drama, MFA Hunter College. He is currently working on a Roe Green Commission with Cleveland Playhouse. www.phillipchristiansmith.com

Yilong Liu

Yilong Liu is a recent graduate of The Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program. His play The Book of Mountains and Seas received the Lambda Literary Award for Drama, and was produced by Alchemation at the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it earned Second Place in the BBC Popcorn Writing Award. His play Good Enemy had its premiere off-Broadway at Minetta Lane Theatre as part of Audible Theater’s 22/23 season. Yilong is an artist-in-residence at Sala Beckett in Barcelona with PlayCo, where his play We Borrowed Brokenness was translated and performed in Catalan in the summer of 2024. Yilong grew up in China and received his MFA from University of Hawai‘i. He is a Core Writer at Playwrights’ Center, a Playwrights Realm writing fellow, and has developed work with Ojai Playwrights Conference, EST/Youngblood, Kennedy Center, Space on Ryder Farm, among others. Currently, he’s under commission from Manhattan Theatre Club’s Sloan Initiative. Plays include We Borrowed Brokenness (Alliance Theatre Kendeda Playwriting Award Finalist, O’Neill Finalist), The Book of Mountains and Seas (Lambda Award, Edinburgh Fringe), June is The First Fall (Yangtze Rep, Original Works Publishing), Joker (Po’okela Award, Kumu Kahua Theatre), Flood in The Valley, a Bilingual Folk Musical (Beijing Tianqiao Theatre Center, Gung Ho Project), PrEP Play, or Blue Parachute (NCTC), and Good Enemy (Audible, Ojai Playwrights Festival).

Veronica Mansour

Veronica Mansour is a composer/lyricist/artist. She is a 2024 Richard Rodgers Award Winner and Jonathan Larson Grant winner, was recently nominated for a Marvin Hamlisch International Music Award (Musical Theatre Composition), selected as one of four writers for DreamWorks Theatricals, MTI & NBCUniversal Emerging Writers Program (currently commissioned to write How To Train Your Dragon Jr.), and one of three 2023 Write Out Loud Contest Winners for her song “Runaway Girl” (written with abs wilson). Current works: LIGHTHOUSE (NAMT Winner 2024, Eugene O’Neill NMTC Winner 2024 & Finalist 2023, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat 2024, Syracuse NWNV 2024, Olney Theatre Center Vanguard Arts Fund Finalist 2023, New York Theatre Barn New Works Series 2023, Vanguard Theater New Works Festival Commission 2023, St. Olaf College World Premiere 2024, NAMT Finalist/Playlist) and The Dark Lady (Eugene O’Neill NMTC Winner 2023, Syracuse NWNV Finalist, 2024 Musical Theatre West New Works Festival, 2024 Johnny Mercer Writers Grove at Goodspeed Musicals, 2024 South Carolina New Play Festival).

Sophie Boyce

Sophie Boyce is a Lyricist-Librettist originally from London UK. Credits include “The Dark Lady” (Eugene O’Neill NMTC Winner 2023, Goodspeed Musicals Jonny Mercer Writers Grove 2024, South Carolina New Play Festival 2024, MTWest New Works 2024 and Syracuse NWNV Finalist 2024) and “The Forty Elephants” (Edge Hill University New Works Initiative 2024 and The Other Palace Musical Bites 2024). Sophie has most recently been honoured as Finalist for the Kleban Prize for Lyricism, Write Out Loud and the Stiles and Drewe Best New Song Award.

Sophie is alum of the NYU Tisch Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program and BMI Lehman Engel Bookwriters Workshop. Prior to all of this she was a member of the Writers Room for the BAFTA-Award-Winning television series ‘Skins’, and Founder/Director of the acclaimed UK-based Musical Theatre program, Spirit YPC.

Matthew Jellison

Matthew Jellison is a writer, actor, educator, and native New Yorker. His plays tend to live in a space where inner fantasies scrape up against the real world. He is absolutely beaming to be a 2024-25 DGF Playwriting Fellow. Matthew is the author of the play cycle, the giants. the giants, parts one and two premiered at Loft 227 in winter of 2016 and he played the role of Elliot. the giants, part three has been either developed or presented with Barns Arts Collective, Freshground Pepper, The Lark, and Town Stages. Matthew was the 2012-13 Kenan Playwriting Fellow at the Kennedy Center and has developed plays at The Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Signature Theatre DC, SPACE on Ryder Farm, and Woodward Residency. Matthew serves as the Associate Director of Education at Writopia Lab, a literacy nonprofit, where gets to work with some extraordinary kids and teens as they develop their own writing. Matthew holds a BFA in Acting from the University of the North Carolina School of the Arts. While there, Matthew started writing plays for fun that his friends and him could act in during their spare time. He’s currently developing a play to perform opposite his dad, an actor. He’s happiest making new plays with people he loves.