Aaron Coleman is a New York City-based playwright and lyricist originally from Los Angeles. He is honored to be on the 2022 Short List for the Yale Drama Series Prize for his play Tell Me I’m Gorgeous At The End Of The World. In February 2022, his play Where Have All The Fairies Gone? had a reading with Brave New World Repertory Theatre. Recently, his original short family musical Leo’s Big Day Out (music by Chuck Pelletier) was virtually staged by Circle in the Square Theatre School. Tell Me I’m Gorgeous also received a lab reading with The Workshop Theater. His play Uncle Remus, His Life and Times, As Told to Aaron Coleman was chosen by Primary Stages for their 2019 ESPA Drills reading series at the famed Lucille Lortel Theatre.

Over the past couple years, Aaron been a Semi-Finalist for the O’Neill and 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, and a two-time Finalist for The Civilians’ R&D Group.

Select works: Lyricist for the Off-Broadway musical Imelda written with East West Players and New Musicals Inc. (Pan Asian Rep, David Henry Hwang Theatre). Co-bookwriter for Stay Forever: The Life and Music of Dusty Springfield (Renberg Theatre), produced at New World Stages as Forever Dusty. Aaron has developed musicals for McCoy Rigby Entertainment, the Celebration Theatre, and American Folklore Theatre. MFA: Writing for Screen and Television from the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Gloria Oladipo is a playwright and journalist from Chicago, IL (best city in the world) and based in New York. She is a 2022 National Critics Institute Fellow with the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. She is also the 2022 KCACTF Institute for Theater Journalism and Advocacy Fellowship winner. Gloria graduated from Cornell University in 2021, where she won second place in the Heermans-McCalmon Competition for Dramatic Writing and showcased her play THE GOOD VICTIM. She was a 2019 Jeff Ubben Posse Fellow and script reader with the Public Theater in New York. She also created and led the Veterans’ Playwriting Project in partnership with Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, IL. Her short plays and longer works have received readings with the Curious Theater in Denver, CO, at Cornell University, and in other spaces. She is extremely excited and grateful to be named a Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow!

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-race, and Trans non-binary playwright, educator, and theatermaker. They are currently creating work at Carnegie Mellon University (this old haunt), The Fled Collective at The Flea Theater (SWAY & Serials), and CAMP at Ars Nova (Bora & Doots II with Anne-Marie Pietersma). Their work has been seen in various forms throughout the US and the UK including the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, The Workshop Theater, DR2 Theatre, Moxie Arts NY, Art House Productions, The Artist Co-op, Fort Salem Theater, Access Theater, Fresh Ground Pepper, the HMBG Foundation, The Citadel of Playwrights, The Strides Collective, The Sappho Project, The Workshop Theater, The Dare Tactic, The Midnight Factory, and Dragon’s Egg Studio. SMJ has been a semifinalist for the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference, the Princess Grace Award at New Dramatists, and the R&D Group as well as a finalist for the Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award, The 5th Avenue Theater’s First Draft Commission, and Echo Theater’s 2021 National Young Playwright in Residence. They’re a graduate of Otterbein University and the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. SMJ is 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 recently completed a residency at the Catwalk Art Institute where she wrote her new play The Rejects. A recent alumni of WP Theatre’s Lab, she presented a reading of her play They Came In The Night, at the Pipeline Festival 2022. Other plays include Return to Fall (Finalist, Blue Ink Playwriting Award; Semi-Finalist, the O’Neil National Playwrights Conference; Semi-Finalist, Bay Area Playwrights Festival); How to Gild An Eagle (Finalist, Columbia@Roundabout New Play Reading Series; Semi-Finalist for the O’Neil National
Playwrights Conference); Cost (Climate Change Theatre Action Commission 2021); To Raqqa With Love (International Human Rights Arts Festival); How Did the Cat Get So Fat? (nominated Best Play, Life! Theatre Awards, Singapore); Yusof (Festival Commission, Pesta Raya, Singapore). For five years, Zizi was Artistic Director of Teater Ekamatra (Singapore), successfully breaking into the mainstream during her tenure, tripling audiences and garnering multiple awards. Instructor of Drama at Syracuse University, MFA Columbia University.

Eliana Pipes is a playwright, actor, and filmmaker. She’s the 2019 recipient of the Academy Gold Fellowship for Women and the Leah Ryan Fund Prize for Emerging Women Writers.  Her work has been developed or presented at the NNPN MFA Workshop, Ars Nova ANT Fest, San Diego Rep New Latinx Plays Festival, Two River Theater Crossing Borders Festival, The Fire This Time Festival, and the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival. She’s the recipient of the KCACTF Ken Ludwig Scholarship, the WAVE Grant through Wavelength Productions, and a two-time Finalist for the O’Neill National Playwright’s Conference. She received a BA in English from Columbia University, and has just completed coursework on an MFA in Playwriting from Boston University.  More at www.elianapipes.com.

Calley N. Anderson is an up-and-coming playwright from Memphis, Tennessee. Her ten-minute plays have received five festival productions to date (Emerald Theatre Company, TN 2016; Pride Theater at Chandler, VT 2017; Stable Cable Lab Co., NY 2017; InVersion Theatre, NY 2018; Fade to Black Fest, TX 2018). Anderson is a graduate of Davidson College (BA in English, Concentration in Film and Media Studies) and The New School for Drama (MFA in Playwriting). She is a member of the Dramatists Guild and is currently commissioned by the University of Memphis Dept. of Theatre and Dance. Anderson is also one of sixteen Memphis Hub fellows of the Salzburg Global Seminar’s Forum for Young Cultural Innovators and an MFA alumni representative on The New School for Drama’s Cultural Change Task Force. More at calleynanderson.com.

Juan Ramirez, Jr., is a Borinquén-Chapín-Bronx playwright, monologist, director, screenwriter, filmmaker, poet and producer. His play Calling Puerto Rico is a Miranda Family Voces Latinx Finalist with Repertorio Español, 2020 BAPF Finalist and a recipient of the 2019 BRIO Award. Notable produced works include Ridin‘ Shotgun (Best Play Downtown Urban Arts Festival), The American Dream (NAV Playwrights Festival, BBTF), Wall (LaTea, Cimientos), Stroke of Madness (Ingenio Milagro, Cimientos) and Don Juan (Dixon Place). Semi-finalists include Jimmy’s Tab (2011 Princess Grace). His horror short Alone With My Demons won Inwood Art Works’ NYC Quarantine Film Festival’s Best Bronx Film. He’s a founder of The PlayPen Collective and R&R Productions with his wife Cristy Reynoso. He’s a member of the Dramatist Guild, NYC LatinX Playwright Circle and The Bronx Repertory Company. He received his B.A. in Theater from Lehman College and his MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch. www.JuanRamirezJr.com

Regina Velázquez was born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, and earned her BA and MA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee. After teaching writing courses there as well as Northeastern University, she transitioned to educational and trade publishing, working both in-house and freelance as a writer and editor for such companies as Houghton Mifflin, Oxford University Press, McGraw-Hill, Macmillan, and Storey Publishing. 

A brief stint onstage with her children at the Williamstown Theatre Festival’s COMMUNITY WORKS production of Once Upon a Time in the Berkshires led her to participate in the program’s inaugural playwriting intensive in 2019, where she began working on Space and Time. The experience encouraged her to push her personal writing in new directions, including essays, short stories, screenplays, and a YA novel—and, of course, more plays. She was named a finalist for SPACE on Ryder Farm’s Greenhouse Residency in 2020 (delayed due to the pandemic) and is a Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow 2020–2021. She lives in western Massachusetts with her husband and two children.

Nikhil Mahapatra is a writer from India/Singapore. They are an inaugural member of the Lit Council at the Tank, led by Akin Salawu and Beto O’Byrne, a 2018-2019 Gingold Theatre Company Speaker’s Corner writer, and now delighted to be a 2019-2020 Dramatist’s Guild Foundation Fellow. Latest works include CARNAL, The Fields and the short film SPF, which recently had its premiere at The New York Indie Theatre Film Festival (NYITFF).