Born in New York City in 1956, and raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Tony Kushner is best known for his two-part epic, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. His other plays include A Bright Room Called Day, Slavs!, Hydrotaphia, Homebody/Kabul, and Caroline, Or Change, the musical for which he wrote book and lyrics, with music by composer Jeanine Tesori. Kushner has translated and adapted Pierre Corneille’s The Illusion, S.Y. Ansky’s The Dybbuk, Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Person of Sezuan and Mother Courage and her Children, and the English-language libretto for the children’s opera Brundibár by Hans Krasa. He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols’ film of Angels in America and Steven Spielberg’s Munich. In 2012 he wrote the screenplay for Spielberg’s movie Lincoln. His books include But the Giraffe: A Curtain Raising and Brundibar: The Libretto, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak; The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present; and Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict, co-edited with Alisa Solomon. His recent work includes a collection of one-act plays entitled Tiny Kushner, and The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures. Kushner is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, an Emmy Award, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, an Arts Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a PEN/Laura Pels Award, a Spirit of Justice Award from the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, a Cultural Achievement Award from The National Foundation for Jewish Culture, a Chicago Tribune Literary Prize for lifetime achievement, and the 2012 National Medal of Arts, among many others. In September 2008, Tony Kushner became the first recipient of the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, the largest theater award in the US. He is the subject of a documentary film, Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner, made by the Oscar-winning filmmaker Freida Lee Mock. He lives in Manhattan with his husband, Mark Harris.

Lynn Nottage is a playwright from Brooklyn. Her plays include Crumbs from the Table of Joy; Mud, River, Stone; Por 'Knockers; Poof! (Heideman Award); and Las Meninas, which premiered at San Jose Repertory in 2002. Her plays have been produced Off-Broadway and regionally by The Acting Company, Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Alliance Theatre, Buffalo Studio Arena, Crossroads Theatre, Freedom Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Playwrights Horizons, Second Stage, South Coast Repertory, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Yale Repertory, the Vineyard Theatre and many others. Ms. Nottage has received playwriting fellowships from Manhattan Theatre Club, New Dramatists, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is also the recipient of a Playwrights Horizons Amblin/Dreamworks Commission, AT&T Onstage award and a NEA/TCG (1999-2000) grant for a year-long residency at Freedom Theatre. She is a member of New Dramatists and a graduate of Brown University and the Yale School of Drama.

Heidi Schreck is a writer and performer living in Brooklyn. Her critically acclaimed, award-winning play What the Constitution Means to Me played an extended, sold-out run on Broadway in 2019, and was nominated for two Tony Awards. It had subsequent sold-out runs at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., as well as at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and will continue its national tour when safe to do so. Schreck’s other plays Grand Concourse, Creature, and There Are No More Big Secrets have been produced all over the country and she has worked as a stage actor in NYC for almost 20 years. Her screenwriting credits include I Love Dick, Billions, Nurse Jackie and shows in development with Amazon Studios, Big Beach, Imagine Television and A24. As both an actor and writer she is the recipient of three Obie Awards, a Drama Desk Award, and a Theatre World Award, as well as the Horton Foote Playwriting Award and the Hull-Warriner Award from the Dramatists Guild. She was named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business in 2019 and was featured on Variety’s 2019 Broadway Impact List. Schreck was awarded Smithsonian magazine’s 2019 American Ingenuity Award for her work in the Performing Arts.

Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields

Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields met while training at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). All core members of Mischief Theatre, they had already worked in comedy together for several years before they started out as a writing team. The three’s first piece was The Play That Goes Wrong (winner – Best New Comedy – Olivier Awards and What’s On Stage Awards). The show started out on the London and Edinburgh fringe before touring the UK and internationally and then returning to the West End in September 2014, where it is still running. It's also playing on Broadway and headed out on a US tour in 2018 and has been performed in over 20 other countries around the world. Peter Pan Goes Wrong was the trio’s second piece, opening in November 2014 for a UK tour before a hugely successful West End season in Christmas 2015. Henry, Henry, and Jonathan recently adapted the script of Peter Pan Goes Wrong for the BBC, which was filmed with the original West End cast and broadcast to rave reviews on New Year’s Eve. They were invited back to wreak more havoc at the BBC in 2017 with Christmas Carol Goes Wrong on BBC1. The Comedy About A Bank Robbery marks their third writing project as a trio and earned them another Olivier Nomination. @mischiefcomedy and mischieftheatre.co.uk

Monica Wood is a novelist, memoirist, and playwright, the 2019 recipient of the Carlson Prize for contributions to the public humanities, and the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance Distinguished Achievement Award for contributions to the literary arts. Her new novel, How to Read a Book, is forthcoming from Mariner Books, and a new play, Saint Dad, will debut in October 2023 at Portland Stage. Her previous novel, The One-in-a-Million Boy, was translated into 20 languages in over 30 countries. She is also the author of When We Were the Kennedys, a New England bestseller, Oprah magazine summer-reading pick, and winner of the May Sarton Memoir Award. Her other fiction, Any Bitter Thing, Ernie’s Ark, and My Only Story have also won awards and made bestseller lists. Her short stories have been widely anthologized, and her nonfiction has appeared in Oprah, New York Times, Literary Hub, Down East, Martha Stewart Living, Parade, and many other publications. She lives in Portland, Maine, with her husband and their cat, Susie.