Zakiyyah
Alexander | Keli Garrett | Quiara
Alegria Hudes | Cheri Magid
Megan Mostyn-Brown | Cybele Pascal | Sonia Sobieski | Saviana Stanescuu | Kathryn Walat 
ZAKIYYAH ALEXANDER
Quiara hails from West Philadelphia and spent much of her childhood visiting the rest of her family in North Philly, New York and, when lucky, Puerto Rico. She grew up composing music and sneaking into concerts—the sounds of Etta James, Juan Luis Guerra, The Meters and Bach have all crept into her words and worlds in their own musical ways. Her work is feminist, Latina, poetic, humanist, gritty and alive, pulsing with optimism in difficult circumstances. Quiara’s lifelong fascination with ritual infuses her scripts, and she interweaves heightened theatricality with real human stories. Quiara is currently working on new play commissions from South Coast Repertory, Signature Theatre, and People’s Light & Theatre Company. She is also writing the libretto for In the Heights, a salsa-hip-hop-merengue musical that was developed this year at Manhattan Theatre Club and the O’Neill Music Theatre Conference. She earned a B.A. in music composition from Yale University, an M.F.A. in playwriting from Brown, and is a resident playwright at New Dramatists. Plays: CHERI MAGID
Plays:
MEGAN MOSTYN-BROWN
Plays:
CYBELE PASCAL Plays:
SONYA SOBIESKI
SAVIANA STANESCU Saviana Stanescu was born in Bucharest, Romania.
She has published four books of poetry Making Love on the Barbed WIre,
Advice for Housewives and Muses, and Outcast (all in Romanian), and
Diary of a Clone (English). Stanescu’s published dramatic writing
includes The Inflatable Apocalypse (best Romanian Play of the year
1999); Black Milk (four plays in Romanian and English) and Final Countdown/Compte
A Rebours (Antoine Vitez Center Award, Paris). Her plays have been
presented in the U.S., the U.K., France, Austria, Hungary, Macedonia,
Montenegro, and, of course, Romania. Recent New York productions include
Yokastas Redux (co-author Richard Schechner) at La MaMa Theater, Balkan
Blues at the Fringe Festival, Waxing West at The Lark Theatre, and
the short plays Jelly-Love and Peanut-Butter at Manhattan Theatre Source
and Aurolac Blues at Here Arts Center. Saviana holds an MA in Performance
Studies (2001-2002 Fulbright fellow) and an MFA in Dramatic Writing
(John Golden Award in Playwriting), both from Tisch School of the Arts,
New York University. She is currently an associate artist and TCG New
Generations international fellow with The Lark Theatre Company, playwright-in-residence
of East Coast Artists (director Richard Schechner), a member of Women's
Project Playwrights Lab, and adjunct faculty at NYU, Drama Department. KATHRYN WALAT
Plays:
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Zakiyyah
Alexander is a playwright and performer. She is the author of: After
the Show: A Play in Mask, Pralaya, Blurring Shine, (900), Elected,
The Etymology of Bird, and SICK? Her work has been produced/developed
at: Summer Play Festival (SPF) at Theatre Row, Greenwich Street Theatre,
NY International Fringe Festival, La Mama Etc, Pace Theatre, Ensemble
Studio Theatre, Creative Place Theater, and The Producer’s Club.
Readings include: Women’s Project, Actors Express, New Dramatists,
The Vineyard Theatre, New Professional Theatre, a commission with GAle
GAtes et al, among others. Current commissions: Mt. Holyoke. Awards
and Fellowships: Dramatists Guild, Jackson Phelan Award, Fellowship
at New Dramatists, Drama League New Directors/New Works, New Professional
Theatre Playwriting Award, residency at New Perspectives Theatre, Young
Playwrights Inc. Her work will be included in the upcoming edition
of New Monologues for Women by Women. She is a resident member of New
Dramatists, EST’s Youngblood, and the Women’s Project Playwrights
Lab. 
Keli
Garrett’s plays have been produced and developed at Dixon Place
in New York City, the Zoo District in Los Angeles, 24 Hour Plays, Playwrights
Horizon in New York, Rites and Reason Theatre, Victory Gardens Theatre,
City Lit Theater Company, Chicago Theater Company, Organic Theater,
The Providence Black Repertory Company and The California College of
Arts and Crafts. The Rhode Island Arts Council, The Joyce Foundation,
City Lit Theatre and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum have
commissioned her work. Currently, Keli is a 2004-05 fellow of The Dramatists
Guild and The Women’s Project Playwright’s Lab. Keli holds
an M.F.A. 1999 in Creative Writing from Brown University, where in
1997 she was a Beinecke Foundation fellow. She holds a B.A. in Theatre
from Columbia College.
Cheri
Magid’s plays, which include et al;, Manna, The Cliffs of Moher,
and The Lock, have been seen at The New Group, The Women’s Project,
Rattlestick, La Mama, Makor, and the West Bank Theatre in New York,
M.Y.E Productions in Los Angeles, and South Coast Repertory in Costa
Mesa CA. South Coast commissioned her play et al; and has also commissioned
her to write an adaptation of the children’s book The Rebellious
Alphabet. Lydia, or the Girl at the Wheel, Cheri’s radio play,
aired on National Public Radio in the summer of 2001. Susan Gallin,
producer of The Vagina Monologues, optioned her play Hot Yoga. The
Cliffs of Moher is soon to be published by Pretty Things Press. Cheri
is a member of The Women’s Project writers’ group. She
also served as New Dramatists’ Literary Director from 1995-1999
and New York Creative Executive for Wildwood Productions, Robert Redford’s
film company, from 1999-2001.
Megan
Mostyn-Brown: Plays include: Girl, The Secret Lives of Losers, 4th
of July, Going After Alice and The Hawk Has No Home. Her plays have
been read and performed at: The Actor’s Theater of Louisville,
The Women’s Project and Productions, LAByrinth Theater Company,
The Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis Playwrights Center, The Public Theater,
The Warehouse Theater, Barrington Stage Company, The NYC International
Fringe Festival, The Tribeca Theater Festival and The HBO Comedy Arts
Festival in Aspen, CO. She won an honorable mention for The Secret
Lives of Losers in the 2004 Herrick Theater Foundation New Play Competition.
Megan is a member of LAByrinth Theater Company and The Women’s
Project Playwrights LAB. She has been a guest playwright at New River
Dramatists and the 24/7 Lab. Megan is a graduate of Northwestern University.
Cybele
Pascal's plays have been produced/developed by the Cherry Lane Theater, PSNBC,
NYTW, Naked Angels, New Georges, Dixon Place, the Abingdon Theater Company,
the Lark Theater Company, New York Performance Works, Miranda Theater Company,
Underwood Theater Company, Stages Repertory Theater, in Houston, Texas, and
the Stamford Center for the Arts. Cybele is the recipient of a Berrilla-Kerr
Playwriting Award, two LeComte du Nouy Awards from the Lincoln Center Foundation,
a John Golden Playwriting Award, a Cherry Lane Playwriting Fellowship, a Schubert
Playwriting Fellowship, and a Juilliard Playwriting Fellowship. Her cookbook,
The Whole Foods Allergy Cookbook: 200 Gourmet and Homestyle Recipes for the
Food Allergic Family, just won an I-Parenting Media Award and is currently
on the top ten list for pre-orders on Amazon. Artists Diploma, The Juilliard
School, MFA, Columbia University.
Sonya
Sobieski recently completed her MFA in playwriting at Brooklyn College,
where she studied with Mac Wellman for two years. She has also taken
workshops with iconoclastic greats Jeff Jones, Erik Ehn, and Maria
Irene Fornes. Before getting her Master’s, Sonya worked as the
Literary Manager of Playwrights Horizons for six years, so her plays
often mix strong narratives and believable characters with a heightened
theatrical sensibility and irreverent comic voice. She is an Affiliated
Artist with the Obie Award-winning New Georges, who recently commissioned
a full-length play, Commedia dell Smartass, to be produced in September
2005. Sonya’s first full-length won a Best in Fringe award for
excellence in playwriting at the New York International Fringe Festival.
Her work has also been produced by Raw Impressions Music Theater, Little
Theatre at Tonic, Six Figures, and the adobe theater company. She has
been a finalist for the Actors Theatre of Louisville Heideman Award
three times. Her short screenplay, Last Laugh, was a 2001 Slamdance
Finalist, and the film, Weekend Getaway, which she wrote, won the Special
Jury Prize for Best Short Screenplay at the Avignon/New York Film Festival
in 1999. She has an A.B. from Smith College. 
Kathryn
Walat is a member of the Playwright’s Lab at the Women’s
Project, where her play Greenspace (formerly Approaching the Garden
State) appeared in their 2005 Women’s Work festival and her Knife,
Fire, Fang was part of their Pink Room series. Her play Know Dog received
its world premiere at Salvage Vanguard Theater in Austin, after a workshop
production at the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca. Other plays include Johnny
Hong Kong (Perishable Theatre; Actors Theatre, Santa Rosa), Rotten
State (Bay Area Playwrights Festival), Spy Speak Spy (New York International
Fringe Festival), A Book of Two (Yale Drama School thesis), and the
children’s play Andronocles and the Lion (commissioned by the
Hangar Theatre). She has been published in the International Women’s
Playwriting Festival Anthology, in the upcoming New Monologues for
Women by Women II, and by Salvage Vanguard Press. An affiliated playwright
with New Georges, her work has also been developed at the Lark Play
Development Center. She received her BA from Brown University and her
MFA from Yale Drama School, where she was a recipient of the Audrey
Wood scholarship. 
