2026 Playwrights

Born in Egypt, raised in London and now based in Seattle, Yussef El Guindi’s work frequently examines the collision of ethnicities, cultures and politics that face Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans. His most recent productions: Hotter Than Egypt at Marin Theatre Company, ACT in Seattle, and at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, and People of the Book, staged at ACT, and at Urban Stages (NYC). Bloomsbury/ Methuen Drama has published The Selected Works of Yussef El Guindi; and Broadway Play Publishing Inc. and Dramatists Play Service have published a number of his other plays. He is the recipient of several honors, including the Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Citation of Excellence Award, the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award, Colorado’s Henry Award, American Blues Theater’s Blue Ink Playwriting Award, Seattle’s The Stranger’s Genius Award, L.A. Weekly’s Excellence in Playwriting Award, Seattle’s Gregory Award and the Middle East America Distinguished Playwright Award. In 2023, he was selected by the Royal Society of Literature as an International Writer.

Aurin Squire is an award-winning playwright, journalist, and multimedia artist. Squire wrote the book for the Tony-nominated Broadway musical “A Wonderful World” that opened at Studio 54 in October 2024. He won the Helen Merrill Prize for Emerging Playwrights as well as Seattle Public Theatre’s Emerald Prize for new American plays. He graduated from The Juilliard School after a two-year fellowship in the Lila Acheson American Playwriting Program. Squire has had fellowships at The Dramatists Guild of America, National Black Theatre, Royal Court Theatre, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange. After graduating from Northwestern University, he worked as a reporter for publications like ESPN, The Miami Herald, The Chicago Tribune, The New Republic, Talking Points Memo, and Take Part. His dark comedy “To Whom It May Concern” won New York LGBT theatre awards for best play, best playwright, and best actor before being optioned and remounted off-Broadway to critical acclaim at the Arclight Theatre. As a documentary writer, Squire received a year-long commission to live in New Mexico, interviewing Jewish Latinos. He worked with an ensemble to create “A Light in My Soul,” a docudrama produced around New Mexico about Jewish families who fled from the Spanish Inquisition and settled in the American Southwest. Squire also wrote “Dreams of Freedom,” a multimedia installation video about Jewish immigrants in the 20th century, for the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. “Dreams” won 3 national museum awards and is in the permanent exhibit at NMAJH. His drama “Freefalling” was produced at Barrington Stage Company and won the Fiat Lux Award (“Let There Be Light”) from the Catholic Church’s Theatre Conference. Squire won the grand prize in the InspiraTO Theatre’s International Play Festival in Toronto for “Freefalling” and the play was published in Dramatists Play Service’s Outstanding Short Plays Volume 2. “Article 119-1,” his drama about a gay rights activist in Belarus, was produced in Florence, Italy, Norway, Vancouver, and Los Angeles in March 2014. Squire’s comedy “African Americana” received its world premiere at London’s Theatre 503. He has been a guest artist and lecturer at Northwestern University, Penn State U (Altoona), Gettysburg College, NYU, Molloy College, and New School University. His plays have been produced in London, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, and other cities in the US and abroad. Squire has worked as a tv writer on “This is Us” and “BrainDead” and was the co-executive producer/writer on the legal drama “The Good Fight” and the supernatural thriller “Evil.” He lives in New York City.

Lisa D’Amour is a playwright and interdisciplinary collaborator from New Orleans, Louisiana. She grew up in a world of ritual, activism, group spectacle and care, all of which continue to thrive in her work. Her plays have been produced across the globe, including at MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theater on Broadway, Playwrights Horizons (NYC), Steppenwolf Theater (Chicago), Woolly Mammoth Theater (Washington D.C.), The National Theater (London) Catastrophic Theater (Houston) and ArtSpot Productions (New Orleans)..Her play Detroit was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and Susan Smith Blackburn prize, and she’s received two OBIE Awards. Lisa’s company PearlDamour makes interdisciplinary, often site-specific works, most recently premiering Ocean Filibuster, a genre-crashing human-ocean showdown (American Repertory Theater + touring). She has also been honored with the Alpert Award for the Arts, the Steinberg Playwright Award and the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award.

Beth Kander is a USA Today best-selling novelist and longtime dramatist. Described as a “genre-defying author and playwright” (Oxford American), her writing style blends warmth, wit, and solid punches to the gut. Her work often explores identity, transitional moments in life or society, and how worlds old and new connect—or collide.

Beth was a Dramatists Guild Foundation National Fellow (2024-2025). Playwriting awards include two wins at Ashland New Plays Festival, where she subsequently served six seasons as Host Playwright and will be returning to host in 2026; Charles M. Getchell New Play Award; two Henry Awards for Best New Play or Musical; three Eudora Welty Playwriting Awards. Her newest play, Best Line Wins, will premiere in the 2026 season at the Contemporary American Theater Festival. She is also a former Mississippi Arts Commission Literary Fellow. Beth’s debut novel, I Made it Out of Clay (Mira/ HarperCollins), hit shelves in December 2024 and was an immediate bestseller; she has also authored several books for younger readers, including the popular picture book Do Not Eat This Book! (Sleeping Bear Press, 2023) and the cult hit dystopian YA trilogy Original Syn (Owl House Books, 2018—an independent press that sadly shuttered in the wake of the pandemic). Beth’s work has appeared in Oprah Daily, Writer’s Digest, Slackjaw, Frazzled, American Theatre, and elsewhere.

Christina Pumariega (she/her) acts and writes. Often simultaneously. Last spring she performed in the world premiere of her play ¡VOS! at Two River Theater. ¡VOS! was developed at the Ojai Playwrights Conference, received the Edgerton Foundation New Play Award and was nominated for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize. She recently performed in VIDAS PRIVADAS, inspired by Noël Coward’s PRIVATE LIVES, at New York Stage & Film. She is a 25/26 member of Center Theater Group’s LA Writers’ Workshop and just completed a fellowship at the MacDowell Colony. Other plays include LABOR (Leah Ryan honorable mention), JOAN DARK (Denver Center for the Performing Arts’ New Play Summit), HARBOR GIRLS and HER MATH PLAY (EST/Sloan Grant). She is currently under commission by Manhattan Theatre Club/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and DCPA. TV writing credits include Disney+ and NBC.

Acting on and Off-Broadway and in television and film, Pumariega has cross examined Coach Taylor, made out with the Fly and set a Cuban pharmacy ablaze in a corset. MFA, NYU Graduate Acting Program.