Rachel Axler's plays include Archaeology, which premiered at The Kitchen Theatre in April 2009, and Smudge, which has had readings through Manhattan Theatre Club, The Lark Play Development Center and The Playwrights Foundation, and was developed at the 2008 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. Rachel has held fellowships at The Dramatists Guild and The Lark, and is currently working on commissioned plays for South Coast Repertory and Lincoln Center Theater. Her work has been published in The New York Times, as well as other, less reputable places. Rachel is also a television writer -- until September 2008, she wrote for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, for which she received the 2006 Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program. She is now based in LA, where she writes for Parks and Recreation, a new sitcom on NBC. Rachel received her BA from Williams College and her MFA in Playwriting from UCSD. Member: Dramatists Guild, Writers Guild of America.

Mickey Birnbaum's play Big Death & Little Death inaugurated Woolly Mammoth's new Washington D.C. theatre in 2005. It has been produced subsequently in Providence, San Francisco, Los Angeles; and Houston . The play was nominated for a 2006 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play, and was a 2006 PEN USA Literary Awards Finalist. His play Bleed Rail premiered at the Theatre@Boston Court in Los Angeles in 2007, and won a 2008 Garland Award for Playwriting. In 2006, Mickey spent two months living in William Inge's boyhood home in Independence, Kansas as the recipient of a Inge Fellowship. He has written numerous children’s plays for L.A.’s celebrated non-profit, Virginia Avenue Project. He has written screenplays for Universal, Paramount, Columbia/Sony, DreamWorks, Interscope, Warner Brothers, and Leonardo di Caprio's Appian Way Productions, and recently completed a screenplay in collaboration with director Steven Shainberg (Secretary, Fur). He is a member of the 2009 Center Theatre Group Writer’s Workshop.

Padraic Duffy has worked at theaters throughout L.A., including A.S.K. Theatre Projects, The Met Theater, the Echo Theater Co., Sacred Fools Theater Co., Cypress College, and Theatre of Note.  His full-length plays include Tym & Brizz, The Illustrious Birth of Padraic T. Duffy, Feet, The Mechanical Rabbit, Tell The Bees, Copy, Something Is Hidden Inside the Couch and Beaverquest! The Musical, which premiered at the Sacred Fools Theater in the Summer of 2008. He has served as the Literary Assistant at the Center Theatre Group and Literary Associate at the Geffen Playhouse, as well as Co-Artistic Director and Board member of The Sacred Fools Theater Company. He is also a proud member of the Echo Theater Company and is honored to be a part of the Playwrights Union.

Julia Edwards’ play Family Planning premiered in a site-specific production in Los Angeles area homes in 2008 and was re-mounted by Chalk Repertory Company (LA) in 2009. The Rats Are Getting Bigger received a reading in The Public’s New Work Now festival and was produced in the NYC Fringe Festival. She was commissioned by South Coast Repertory to write Lockdown for their Teen Players Troupe and the play was subsequently produced there. Her ten-minute play The Charade of the Zombies was a finalist for the Heidegger Award at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Ellie’s Third Eye and the Death of Dreams was a recent finalist at The O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Conference, and a semi-finalist at Playlabs. She has worked with LAByrinth Theatre Company (NYC), Salvage Vanguard Theatre (Austin), Printer’s Devil (Seattle), Collaboration (Chicago), Echo Theatre Company (LA), and LSU (Shreveport), among others. Julia studied Semiotics at Brown University and received an MFA in playwriting from UC-San Diego. She now lives in Pasadena, CA with her husband and two children. For more information about her plays, screenplays, and children’s books, please visit www.JuliaEdwards.com.

Ellen Fairey's play Graceland opens in New York as part of Lincoln Center’s LCT3 program in May 2010. Graceland was named one of the Top Ten Plays of 2009 by both Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun Times. Graceland had five extensions and ran for six consecutive months as part of Profiles Theatre’s 20th anniversary season. Fairey’s Girl, 20 was named one of the Top Ten Plays of 2006 by the Chicago Tribune and nominated for two LA Weekly awards in 2007. Her plays Tuning in El Paso and Chill is Good were both award winners at Chicago's Collaboraction Sketchbook Festival '00 and '06. Other works have been read as part of Chicago Dramatists Saturday Series and her short play Aloha From Palm Springs was part of Edward Albee's Last Frontier Theatre Conference in 2004. She is currently working on a new play commission from New York theatre producers Ulu Grosbard and Rhoda Herrick. Fairey is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Dorothy Fortenberry is a playwright and recent graduate of the Yale School of Drama. Her plays include Good Egg, Caitlin and the Swan, Bibles and Candy, book and lyrics for the musical Bicycling for Ladies, and the solo piece Paint Show. Her work has been developed at Arena Stage, Ars Nova, Geva Theatre, Perishable Theatre, Studio 42, and The Tank, and produced by The Management, Journeyman Productions, and Vital Theatre Company. In addition to writing, she served for two years as an Artistic Associate of the Yale Cabaret, and has taught playwriting in Washington, DC and New Haven, CT. She is the winner of the ASCAP Cole Porter Prize in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama, and has been nominated for the PONY Fellowship, the Weissberger Award and the Wasserstein Prize. Her play Good Egg won the Jane Chambers Student Playwriting Prize, and was a Finalist for the Princess Grace Award. She is currently working on an EST/Sloan commission, and will be an artist in residence at the Djerassi Program this spring. She is a proud alumna of Youngblood and excited to be a member of the Playwrights Union. More info and the occasional soulful photograph at www.dorothyfortenberry.com

Mark Glinski, a Chicago native, is a playwright and screenwriter based in Los Angeles. His play The Devil's Sonata won the 2001 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for Dramatic Writing. It was produced by Visions and Voices Theatre Company at Strawdog Theatre, Chicago, spring 2003. His play Utah was a finalist for the Humana Festival Heidman Award for short plays in 2001. It was performed at the Turnip Festival in New York City and at the Heartlande Theatre Company Play-by-Play Festival in Oakland, Michigan, that same year. A number of other plays have been produced at small theatres in Chicago. Mark has also written and performed material for various cabaret shows and comedy reviews in Chicago.

Gina Gold's plays include the one-act comedy How’s The Pressure? produced at the Friars Club of Beverly Hills; and Lemel and Tzipa, an adaptation of an Isaac Bashevis Singer story staged by The Jewish Theatre of the Berkshires. Additionally, Gina is a television and animation writer, who was on the staff of the NBC sitcoms Coupling and The Fighting Fitzgeralds starring Brian Dennehy. She is co-creator of the groundbreaking animated series The n00bs, set in the gaming universe of The World of Warcraft due out on Machinima.com in spring 2009. Gina, together with fellow Playwrights Union member Aurorae Khoo, recently won the Writers Guild of America West 2009 TV Diversity Writers Competition. Gina is also a prolific children’s book author with more than 40 published titles for Sesame Street, Looney Tunes and other well-known franchises. She is an award-winning print journalist and humor essayist whose work has been featured on NPR, in The Washington Post, and First Magazine for Women.

Jennifer Haley's plays include Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom, Breadcrumbs and Froggy.  Her work has been produced and developed at the Actors Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival of New American Plays, Summer Play Festival and Naked Angels in New York City, Echo Theater Company in Los Angeles, PlayPenn in Philadelphia, and Refraction Arts at the Blue Theater in Austin. She has been published by Samuel French and Playscripts, Inc.  Ms. Haley holds an MFA in Playwriting from Brown University, where she was awarded the Joelson Prize in Creative Writing and the Weston Award for Drama.  She was a 2008 resident of the MacDowell Colony and Millay Colony for the Arts. You can find out more about her at jenniferhaley.com.

Aaron Henne's plays include King Cat Calico Finally Flies Free! (published by Original Works Publishing), Record Storm Spreads Ruin! (commissioned by the Los Angeles History Project) and Sliding Into Hades, which received LA Weekly Awards for Playwriting and Production of the Year. Aaron has served in script development capacities for Culture Clash, The Colony Theatre, Center Theatre Group and The Theatre @ Boston Court, where he serves as Co-Literary Manager. His exploration of machines and their relationships to humanity, Body Mecanique, was developed and produced by LA Contemporary Dance Company (LACDC). His playwriting process book, You Already Know, is available through Writ Large Press. In 2010, he will continue his collaboration with LACDC, including the presentation of a new piece commissioned by The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. In June, Blood Red Lost Head Dead Falcon: The Nibelungen, a multimedia performance piece and LA Opera Ring Festival partner, will premiere in Southern California. He teaches writing for the Playwrights' Program at The Robey Theatre Company, Writing Pad and runs the writer's studio, Wordstrut. Aaron is a proud member of The Playwrights Union. www.aaronhenne.com

Susan Johnston is a six-time published playwright who completed her MFA in Dramatic Writing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she received the Harry Kondoleon Playwriting Award. Her plays have been produced and/or read all over the country. She’s received a MacDowell Colony residency, a Jerome Fellowship and was a Fulbright nominee. She has been the recipient of an NEA grant, a MN State Arts Board Career Opportunity Grant, a WV State Arts Grant and The Pilgrim Project Grant. She recently won LA Weekly’s Annual Theatre Award for Playwriting for her play How Cissy Grew, which will be published by Dramatic Publishing and will be presented as part of Charleston, WV’s FestivALL in June. In addition, Susan has worked as a film industry reporter for Interview magazine and was an interstitial writer for A&E’s popular Biography series. Her first novel, Party Favors, co-authored with Nicole Sexton, is on the shelves now.

Rolin Jones' play The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. It received the 2006 Obie Award for Excellence in Playwriting. Productions of Jenny Chow include: South Coast Repertory, Old Globe Theatre, Yale Repertory, Studio Theatre (DC), Atlantic Theater Company (NYC), Portland Center Stage, San Jose Repertory, among others. His full-length play, The Jammer, received a Fringe First Award for Best New Writing at 2004's Edinburgh Fringe Festival and was also produced at the 2004 New York International Fringe Festival. He has written several short plays for the Actor's Theater of Louisville's Humana Festival, including Sovereignty, Ron Robby Had Too Big A Heart, The Mercury and the Magic, Extremely, and Chronicles Simpkins Will Cur Your Ass. All of these were recently produced together under the title “Shortstack” at Wellfleet Harbor Actor’s Theatre. For the last four years, a writer/producer for Showtime's award-winning series, Weeds. He is currently in development with Showtime on an original pilot, Frontman. 6’2. 203 pounds, fighting the battle of the fat in Echo Park, California.

Lila Rose Kaplan's plays have been produced and developed by Arena Stage, The Kennedy Center, La Jolla Playhouse, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Mixed Blood, Perishable Theater, PlayPenn, and The Lark, among others. Lila Rose received her MFA in Playwriting at UCSD, where she studied with Naomi Iizuka. Lila Rose belongs to the Dramatists Guild of America and is a founding member of The Playwrights Union in Los Angeles. Currently, Lila Rose is the recipient of the Adele and Ted Shank Playwriting Fellowship. She is in residence at Cornerstone Theatre Company in Los Angeles. She is also an artist in residence at Westmont College where she teaches playwriting. Lila Rose's play “Wildflower” will debut this summer at Second Stage in NYC. To learn more about Lila Rose please visit www.lilarose.org.

Lisa Kenner  is an LA-based playwright and producer. Her play, Shelter, was a semi-finalist for the 2009 PlayPenn Playwrights Conference. Her play, A Terminal Affair, was produced in several 10-minute play festivals in Southern California. Her short plays, Have I Told You Lately and The Ring, were developed into short films and produced by the National University Digital Cinema Residency in 2008-09. She is a member of Theatre of NOTE and The Robey Theatre Company Playwrights Lab. Los Angeles producing credits include He Asked For It (Ovation, LA Weekly, LA Drama Critics Circle and GLAAD award nominations); Red Light, Green Light (Ovation nomination); The Maids (4 NAACP nominations); and the Los Angeles History Project 2003-04. A native of Boston and a graduate of Wesleyan University, Lisa lives in Eagle Rock with her husband, actor Chet Grissom.

Aurorae Khoo is originally from Sacramento, California.  She currently teaches screenwriting at USC and last year was a visiting professor for NYU’s Graduate Film Program in Singapore.  She has a Gerbode Foundation Commission for a new play premiering in San Francisco summer 2009 and a commission from South Coast Repertory for another new play.  She developed an original pilot in Fox’s Diversity Program and has written produced episodes of JAG and Walker, Texas Ranger.   Aurorae’s plays have produced and developed around the country.

Ruth McKee's plays include Hell Money, a runner-up for the 2009 Yale Drama Series Award; Stray, winner of the 2008 Stanley Drama Award, recent readings at Abingdon Theatre, New York, Black Dahlia Theatre, Los Angeles, Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York; The Nightshade Family, produced in the 2007 Summer Play Festival (SPFNYC), readings at Playwrights Horizons, NY and Alliance Theatre, Atlanta; Otherwise Engaged, Actors Theatre of Louisville; Full Disclosure, Security Check and Mail Returned, Six Figures Theatre Company; The Noise Room, HB Playwrights Foundation; 500 Words and Long Term Parking, published by Playscripts Inc. Originally from Canada, by way of Bangladesh and Kenya, Ruth has a BFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU, an MFA in Playwriting from UCSD, and currently lives in Los Angeles where she is a founding member of Chalk Repertory Theatre.

Winter Miller’s play In Darfur premiered in 2007 at The Public Theater, followed by a standing room only performance at the 1800-seat Delacorte theater, the first play by a woman performed there. In Darfur won the 2006 Guthrie Theater and Playwrights’ Center’s Two-Headed Challenge. Her comedy, The Penetration Play, was produced by 13Playwrights. She is developing the musical Something’s Wrong With Amandine as well as a commission about women who go to war. The group Voices of Uganda commissioned her to accompany them to war-torn Northern Uganda to write short plays with and for former child soldiers. Winter’s plays have been performed across the United States, and in London, Uganda and Canada. Her plays are published by Playscripts, some are anthologized. Known to commit acts of journalism, Winter has written for the New York Times and was columnist Nicholas Kristof’s researcher. She started out as an NBC Page. She holds a BA from Smith College and an MFA in playwriting from Columbia. Winter is a member of the Obie-winning collective 13Playwrights.

Brett Neveu's recent productions include Old Glory with Writer’s Theatre, American Dead with Rouge Machine, and Gas for Less with The Goodman Theatre.  Past work includes productions with The Royal Shakespeare Company, A Red Orchid Theatre, Strawdog Theatre, TimeLine Theatre Company, American Theatre Company, Spring Theatreworks, Aardvark Theatre and 29th Street Rep.  Recent films include The Earl with Sikorafilms and Exit, Clowny with Jon Pon Flims.  He is the recipient of the Ofner Prize for New Work, the Emerging Artist Award from The League of Chicago Theatres, an After Dark Award for Outstanding Musical (“Old Town”) and has developed plays with The New Group, The Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, Victory Gardens, The 42nd Street Workshop, The Marin Theatre and is a resident-alum with Chicago Dramatists.  He is also an ensemble member of A Red Orchid Theatre and has been commissioned by The Royal Court Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club (Sloan Commission), Steppenwolf Theatre Company, The Goodman Theatre, TimeLine Theatre Company, Writers’ Theatre, Strawdog Theatre and has several of his plays published through Broadway Play Publishing and Dramatic Publishing.  Brett has taught writing at Northwestern University, DePaul University and Second City Training Center.

Janine Salinas moved to the United States at the age of eight from Lima, Peru and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her MFA from the University of Southern California’s Dramatic Writing Program in 2007. Her first play, Soledad, had its World Premiere run at the CASA 0101 Theatre in Los Angeles in 2007. Her screenplay, Tercio De Muerte, was awarded a Quarter Finalist position for the 2007 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting through the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Janine’s play, Las Mujeres Del Mar, was nominated for the Wendy Wasserstein Prize through the Dramatists Guild of America, received a staged reading at the Ford Amphitheatre in Los Angeles in 2008, and was a Finalist/Alternate for the Bay Area Playwright’s Festival in 2009. Her latest play, El Tren De La Muerte, received its first staged reading at the Egyptian Arena Theatre in Hollywood in July 2008. Ms. Salinas has worked as a poet and theatre instructor in high schools, juvenile halls, and women’s prisons throughout California.

Steve Serpas' plays include Sweet Colinda, winner of the Native Visions/Native Voices Playwriting Award at LSU, with readings at The Blank Theatre Company and Victory Gardens in Chicago, Xenogenesis, winner of the 1999 Garland Best Play Award from Backstage West and produced by Eclectic Theatre Company/Curt Kaplan, and Smoke the Baby, with readings at Theatre N.O.W. and Chicago Dramatists. Other works include The Catastrophe of Success, Dogtown, Harvestide and Waning Crescent Moon. A native of Baton Rouge, Steve received his BFA in Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. In Chicago, he was an ensemble member at Shattered Globe and a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists. He also worked with American Blues, Prop Thtr, Strawdog, Victory Gardens and Young Playwrights, Inc. He has been published by Chicago Plays, Dell and Bakers Plays. Now based in Los Angeles, he has worked with About Productions, Blank Theatre Company, Eclipse Theatre/Chilany Pictures, Theatre N.O.W., and Point Zero Pictures, which just produced his short film, La La Loco Baby.

Jeremy W. Soule is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where he double majored in Dramatic Writing and Drama, with an emphasis in directing. He received both the Senior Achievement Award and Artist and Scholar Award his senior year for his thesis play, The Match, and was a member of Youngblood, Ensemble Studio Theatre' professional young playwright group. His play, Heartbreak of the Last Handwriting, was commissioned by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 2000 and subsequently produced on the EST’s mainstage. He has also served as writer and director on several theatrical projects at HERE, La Mama and Altered Stages in New York. He has been commissioned to write original screenplays Michigan Takedown (for Robert Cort) and Taylor Made (for Mickey Liddell). He has been a staff writer and producer for 20th Century Fox Television's Desire and Watch Over Me, which aired full seasons on MyNetworkTV in 2006. He moved to Los Angeles after being a resident of Brooklyn, NY for ten years. He is originally from Brewster, Massachusetts.

Jennie Webb is an independent Los Angeles playwright whose plays, including Yard Sale Signs, Remodeling Plans, The Complete Story of the War, Men & Boxes, Tilting, Buying a House and Unclaimed Assets, have been presented on stages and in/at/around alternative venues throughout the U.S. and internationally at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Her works have been published by Heinemann Press and International Centre for Women Playwrights, and supported by the now defunct A.S.K. Theater Projects, The Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, PlayLabs, the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights and The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga, California, where she is currently playwright-in-residence and runs "Botanicum Seedlings: A Development Series for Playwrights." She is a new member of the LA-based Rogue Machine Theatre, and also works as freelance arts writer.

Wendy Weiner’s play about Hillary Clinton, Hillary: A Modern Greek Tragedy with a (Somewhat) Happy Ending received its New York premiere in 2008, produced by the Obie-winning theater company New Georges. Previously, Hillary had a workshop at New York’s Public Theater and a staged reading in Los Angeles. Great Highway, a play she wrote with Octavio Solis, was a finalist for the O’Neill Theater Conference and received its premiere at the ArtAttack Theater in Ashland, Oregon. Major Label, her play about a female punk rocker, has had readings at Ensemble Studio Theater and NYU’s Hot Ink Festival. Wendy’s four solo pieces: Give Me Shelter, Searching for the ’60s, Defying Freud and Elements of Style (all directed by Julie Kramer), have been presented at many venues in New York and San Francisco, including HERE’s American Living Room Festival, the New York Fringe Festival and PSNBC. Her plays have been published by Dramatists Play Service and Smith & Kraus, and her writing has appeared in magazines such as American Theatre, Bitch: A Feminist Response to Pop Culture, and Theatre Bay Area. Wendy received her MFA in dramatic writing from NYU in 2007. She is currently working on a new play and writing a TV movie about teen girls for the Disney Channel and Alloy Entertainment.