The Public Theater will offer master classes and more for the chosen playwrights.

New York’s Public Theater has announced the 10 playwrights selected for their 2012-2013 Emerging Writers Group. The Emerging Writers Group targets playwrights early in their career and nurtures their artistic growth. Each writer receives a two-year fellowship at the Public, which includes a $6,000 stipend, master classes with professional playwrights and more. The 2012-2013 writers are: Manuel Borras, A-Lan Holt, Boo Killebrew, Andrew Kramer, Brian “Dyalekt” Kushner, Mary Kathryn Nagle, Harrison David Rivers, Riti Sachdeva, Susan Soon He Stanton, and Kyle Warren.

THE PUBLIC THEATER ANNOUNCES SELECTION OF 2012-13 EMERGING WRITERS GROUP

TEN PLAYWRIGHTS SELECTED FROM MORE THAN 575 APPLICANTS
Time Warner Inc. Is the Founding Sponsor of The Public Writers Initiative

February 6, 2012 –The Public Theater (Artistic Director Oskar Eustis, Executive Director Patrick Willingham) announced today the 10 playwrights selected as the 2012-13 Emerging Writers Group. Now in its fourth season, the Emerging Writers Group is a bi-annual program that targets playwrights at the earliest stages of their careers and nurtures their artistic growth by providing necessary resources and support. Time Warner is the Founding Sponsor of The Public Writers Initiative.

Selected from more than 575 applicants, the 2012-13 Emerging Writers are Manuel Borras, A-Lan Holt, Boo Killebrew, Andrew Kramer, Brian “Dyalekt” Kushner, Mary Kathryn Nagle, Harrison David Rivers, Riti Sachdeva, Susan Soon He Stanton, and Kyle Warren.

Each emerging writer receives a two-year fellowship at The Public which includes a $6,000 stipend; participation in a biweekly writers’ group led by Literary Manager Liz Frankel; master classes with established playwrights; professional development and artistic support from acclaimed writers as well as Public artistic staff; complimentary tickets to Public shows; supplemental ticket stipends for productions at other theaters; and a reading of their work in the biannual "Spotlight Series."

The Emerging Writers Group strengthens The Public’s commitment to creating an artistic home for diverse and exceptionally talented up-and-coming playwrights.  The Emerging Writers Group is one element of The Public Writers Initiative, a long-term program that provides key support and resources for writers at every stage of their careers.

“The Emerging Writers Group marches forward as we welcome another fiercely talented group of writers to The Public,” said Public Theater Associate Artistic Director Mandy Hackett. “Smart, original and bursting with energy and ideas, we are thrilled for them to join our family and be in residence with us over the next two years. I want to express our deepest thanks to Time Warner for their visionary leadership in supporting this program.”

”The Public Theater and this remarkable program have helped to build the careers of a new generation of talent,” said Lisa Garcia Quiroz, Senior Vice President of Corporate Responsibility at Time Warner.  “As a company committed to great storytelling, we are very proud of our partnership with The Public and join them in welcoming the new members to the Emerging Writers Group.”

About The Public Writers Initiative

In addition to supporting up-and-coming playwrights in the Emerging Writers Group, Mid-Career Writers will continue to be supported via readings, workshops and commissions. Since Time Warner began funding The Public Writers Initiative, The Public has produced 50-70 readings and workshops per season. Artistic development of this nature is at the core of The Public’s mission and is critical to helping the institution and writers develop new work for the theater.

Through the Master Writer Chair program, The Public provides an artistic home and support for established playwrights whose work has set the standard for the highest level of achievement in theater.  Master Writers receive full artistic and administrative support, the chance to develop their work with the full resources of The Public Theater and participate in the artistic life of the theater. Inspired by the university model, the full-salaried position as a Visiting Arts Professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Rita and Burton Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing, affords writers the flexibility and freedom to pursue their artistic goals and endeavors.  The current recipient of the Master Writer Chair is Suzan-Lori Parks.

BIOS OF 2012-13 EMERGING WRITERS GROUP MEMBERS

MANUEL BORRAS grew up in the Bronx and was incarcerated at age 17.  While in prison, he received his B.A. from Bard College.  Manny was a founding member of Rehabilitation Through the Arts at Woodbourne Correctional Facility, a theater/arts group, which produced his plays The State Shop, The Hustler's Opera, and Starting Over.  While inside, his play Song to a Child like Me was commissioned by The Working Theater and given a public reading as a part of their 25th anniversary season.

A-LAN HOLT is a playwright from Los Angeles, California.  Her plays and performance pieces have been presented in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and internationally in Kampala, Uganda. Her most recent piece 8ball won the Dr. Floyd Gaffney National Playwriting Award, the Sherifa Omade Edoga Prize for work towards social justice, and the George Fredrickson Prize for Honors Research at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity/The Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University. A-lan graduated from Stanford with honors in 2011.

BOO KILLEBREW is a playwright, choreographer, actress and co-founder of CollaborationTown, A Theatre Company. Her plays include The Play About My Dad, The Momentum, They’re Just Like Us, True Love Waits, and Pulling Teeth. Boo received a New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Featured Actress and Best Ensemble, 2 New York Fringe Festival Awards of Excellence, and The Bette Davis Foundation Award (Boston University).  She is a three-time Artist in Resident at Robert Wilson's Watermill Center, an Edward F. Albee Foundation Fellow, a recipient of Blue Coyote's Commission Project, and a NYFA Panelist and Resident.  She received a B.F.A. from Boston University.

ANDREW KRAMER is from Cleveland, Ohio. He was the 2011 Playwright-in-Residence at the Cairns Arts Festival in Queensland, Australia where his play Whales & Souls received its world premiere. It later received a workshop production at The Flea, produced by The Salvage Company. He was also a 2010-2011 member of the terraNOVA Collective’s Groundbreaker’s Playwrights Group and a 2010 Core Apprentice Writer at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis. He is a 2011 member of the Ingram New Works Lab with Tennessee Repertory Theatre in Nashville, where he is developing his new play, Crying for Lions with playwright Steven Dietz. He is the co-founder of Busted Space Theatre Company, and he holds a B.F.A. from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.

BRIAN “DYALEKT” KUSHNER works with CoLAB & In the Cypher. He has toured internationally with his one man Hip Hop play, Square Peg Syndrome.  He is a Hip Hop Educator with Literacy Takes a Bow and has taught Hip Hop for pre-schoolers and Yale grad students alike. Credits include the Hip Hop Theater Fest, a cameo in the award-winning documentary Freestyle: The of Art Rhyme, and a performance at the United Nations.

MARY KATHRYN NAGLE was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and an honorary member of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska.  She studied theater at Georgetown University, and went on to study law at Tulane Law School.  Plays include Katrina Stories,Welcome to Chalmette, To the 7th Degree, Miss Lead, and Waaxe's Law.  Most recently, the Great Plains Theatre Conference and Metropolitan Community College performed Waaxe’s Law at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

HARRISON DAVID RIVERS wrote When Last We Flew, which received the 2011 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Off-Off Broadway Play, the 2010 FringeNYC Excellence in Playwriting Award and was named one of the Top 10 LGBTQ 2010 FringeNYC productions by The Advocate. His short plays have been produced at the Atlantic Theater, Atlantic Stage 2, Second Stage, Joe’s Pub, Williamstown Theater Festival, and the American Airlines Theater on Broadway. Harrison was a 2010-2011 Van Lier Fellow (New Dramatists) and a 2009-2010 Emerging Artist of Color Fellow (NYTW). He holds an M.F.A. in Playwriting from Columbia University.

RITI SACHDEVA is a theater maker, dancer, and cultural worker. For her playwriting, Riti has been awarded fellowships to the Kennedy Center M.F.A. Play Development Workshop, the O’Neill Playwriting Festival, and a Center for Regional Studies grant. Her play Parts of Parts & Stitches won the 2009-2010 Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival’s Quest for Peace Award and the 2011 Excellence in Playwriting Award at the National Newborn Festival. She received her M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from the University of New Mexico and is the founder of midNite’s cHiLd Productions.

SUSAN SOON HE STANTON is from Honolulu, Hawai'i and was Honolulu Theatre for Youth’s resident playwright for their 2010-11 Season. Her plays have been produced or developed at organizations including Clubbed Thumb/Playwright’s Horizon’s Super Lab, The Flea, Joe’s Pub, the Kennedy Center, London's Institute for Contemporary Art, SoHo Rep, and Yale School of Drama and Yale Cabaret. She was a member of the SoHo Rep Writer-Director Lab 2011, MaYi Playwrights Group, and was the 2011 Van Lier Fellow at the Lark.  She holds a B.F.A. from NYU’s Tisch Dramatic Writing program and an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama Playwriting.

KYLE WARREN’s plays include #nyc; Room For Appeals; Occupation; In the Static, or Listening With Rabbit Ears; Divine Intervention; and Cephalopod. His work has appeared in Chicago, New York, Rhode Island and Los Angeles. Kyle created and is currently in production as writer and director for a new web comedy series, Meet Norma St. Cleod. He lives in New York City and is a graduate of Northwestern University’s Creative Writing for the Media Program.

For more info about the Public Theater, please visit www.publictheater.org.