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

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 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).

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.

Ro Reddick (she/her) is a queer Black playwright and songwriter and recent grad from Brown’s MFA Playwriting program. She writes off-kilter comedies, the theme songs to your late capitalist nightmares.  Ro is a 2024-2025 Playwrights Center Core Apprentice. She is also under commission at People’s Light Theatre for their new Queerways PA commissioning and residency program

Readings + Development Labs: The Ground Floor (Berkeley Rep), Bushwick Starr Reading Series, Clubbed Thumb’s MFA Showcase, and Williamstown Theatre Festival (NYC Reading). 

Fellowships, Residencies, etc.: Venturous Fellowship Nomination, Lambda Literary Fellow in Playwriting, Adele Kellenberg Seaver Fellow in Creative Writing at Brown University, La Mama Umbria International Playwright Retreat, Miranda Theatre Company Playwright Grant, 2x O’Neill Finalist. 

Performance + Songwriting: As an actor, Ro has performed at theaters including Hartford Stage, McCarter Theatre Center, Long Wharf, and KC Rep; Off-Broadway in “Silence! The Musical”, and on screen in The Americans, Louie, and SATC 2. As a singer she has performed and co-written songs for a country, rock, and blues band. She also writes original songs for her plays and is an alum of the BAI Songwriting Workshop.

In addition to her MFA from Brown, Ro has a BFA in Acting from Ithaca College, an MBA from NYU (which she has no intention of using).

Aaron Coleman is a New York City-based playwright and lyricist from Los Angeles. He is a ’22-23 Dramatists Guild Foundation Playwriting Fellow and First Year Member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. His plays include TELL ME I’M GORGEOUS AT THE END OF THE WORLD: THE LAST GAY PLAY (2023 O’Neill Finalist, 2022 Yale Drama Series Prize Shortlist, 2023 Blue Ink Award Semi-Finalist), UNCLE REMUS, HIS LIFE AND TIMES, AS TOLD TO AARON COLEMAN (The Old Globe’s 2023 Powers New Voices Festival), and WHERE HAVE ALL THE FAIRIES GONE? (2022 Reading with Brave New World Repertory Theatre). His original short YA musical LEO’S BIG DAY OUT (music by Chuck Pelletier) was commissioned and virtually staged by Circle in the Square Theatre School.

Over the past couple years, Aaron has also been a Semi-Finalist for the Princess Grace Award, a two-time Finalist for the Jerome Fellowship at the Playwrights’ Center, a Finalist for New York Theater Workshop’s 2050 Fellowship, a Finalist for The Civilians’ R&D Group (in 2020 and 2021), and a Finalist for the 2019 Playwrights’ Week at The Lark. Essentially, he’s been a finalist for everything.

He wrote lyrics for the Off-Broadway musical IMELDA written with East West Players and New Musicals Inc. (Pan Asian Rep, David Henry Hwang Theatre). As a lyricist with New Musicals, Inc. in Los Angeles, Aaron has developed musicals for McCoy Rigby Entertainment, the Celebration Theatre, and American Folklore Theatre. MFA: Writing for Screen and Television, USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Gloria Oladipo is a playwright based in New York, proudly hailing from Chicago, IL. She writes dark comedies about Black women, exploring themes of caregiving, mental health, and trauma through a mix of realism and absurdism.

Gloria is a 2022-2023 Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow and 2023 Seven Devils New Play Conference resident, where her play The Care and Keeping of Schizophrenia (and Other Demons) is in development. She is a 2023 Gingold Group Speaker’s Corner fellow, with her play I Wanna Kill, Annie G. Gloria is 2023 artist-in-residence with New York Stage and Film in Poughkeepsie, New York. Gloria is also a Velvetpark Writers Residency finalist.

Gloria’s other plays include The Good Victim (Cornell University reading/development), The Forever War (Heermans-McCalmon Competition for Dramatic Writing 2nd Place), and other works.

Gloria is also an award-winning cultural critic and journalist. She is a 2022 National Critics Institute fellow at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, an opportunity she was selected for via the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Institute for Theatre Journalism and Advocacy. Gloria’s work has appeared in Teen Vogue, the Guardian, Bitch Media, and other publications.Bachelor of Arts and Sciences: Cornell University.  gloriaoladipo.com

Matthew Libby is a writer and actor based in Brooklyn, by way of Los Angeles. His play DATA won the Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Award, and was adapted as a digital production presented by the Tony-winning Alliance Theatre in May 2021, a production featured in a New York Times review of virtual theatre works that “clear a path toward continued innovation and growth of the form.” Matt is a two-time Princess Grace Award finalist, two-time O’Neill Playwrights Conference semifinalist, and Blue Ink Playwriting Award featured finalist, and his work has been produced and developed by theaters across the country, including Alliance Theatre, Pioneer Theatre Company, The Kennedy Center, National New Play Network, Theater Masters, The Barrow Group, The Road Theater Company, WNYU’s Theatre-in-the-Sound, and others. With Stanford Repertory Theater, he helped devise and acted in THE MANY FACES OF FARCE, which was nominated for a 2018 Bay Area Critics Award for Best Production. As a TV writer, he is developing projects with eOne, Beau Willimon’s Westward Productions, and Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions, and his screenwriting work has been recognized by The Black List and Script Pipeline. Matt studied cognitive science and creative writing at Stanford University, and received his MFA in dramatic writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he was awarded the Chair’s Award for Distinguished Achievement. He is a proud member of the Writers Guild of America and the Dramatists Guild of America. https://www.matthew-libby.com/

SMJ (they/them) is an NYC-based, mixed-Latiné, and Trans non-binary playwright, educator, & theatermaker originally from Mount Vernon, OH. They are a 2022-2023 Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow. Currently, SMJ is creating work with Ars Nova, The Road Theatre Company, Latiné Musical Theatre Lab, The Orchard Project, American Theater Group, CRY HAVOC, The Actors Studio, PlayGround-NY, and The Uptown Collective. Their work has been seen in various forms throughout the US including the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, New York Stage and Film, Lincoln Center, National Queer Theater, Carnegie Mellon University, Otterbein University, Wright State University, Art House Productions, Andy’s Summer Playhouse, The Workshop Theater, The 24 Hour Plays, The Fled Collective, Live Arts, Philly Theater Week, The Tank, and DR2 Theatre. SMJ also writes for the serial podcast, University Radio. SMJ has been a semifinalist for the O’Neill’s National Playwrights Conference, Princess Grace Award at New Dramatists, Van Lier New Voices Fellowship, and The Civilians R & D Group as well as a Finalist for the 2023 Parity Development Award, Write Out Loud Contest, 5th Avenue Theater’s First Draft Commission, and the Doric Wilson Playwright Award. SMJ is a graduate of Otterbein University and the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. They’re a member of the Dramatists Guild and Ring of Keys. www.smjwrites.com

Zizi Majid (she/her) is a playwright whose plays advocate for a shared humanity. She is the inaugural recipient of the Julia Miles Playwriting Residency (WP Theatre), a 2022-23 Playwriting Fellow with the Dramatists Guild Foundation and a proud alumni of the WP Lab. She won the Pacific Rim Prize for Playwriting (Kumu Kahua / UHM Theatre Playwriting Contest); has been a finalist for the Blue Ink Playwriting Award; a finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival; a twice semi-finalist for the O’Neil National Playwrights Conference and a finalist for the Columbia@Roundabout New Play Reading Series. Plays include They Came in the Night, Return to Fall, The Rejects and How to Gild an Eagle. For five years, Zizi was the Artistic Director of Teater Ekamatra (Singapore) garnering multiple awards during her tenure. She teaches playwriting and drama in context at Syracuse University. MFA: Columbia University