Huntington Theatre Company Announces 2015-2017 Playwriting Fellows

Huntington Theatre Company announces its 2015-2017 cohort of Huntington Playwriting Fellows: Thom Dunn and Deborah Salem Smith.

The Huntington fosters local playwrights at all stages of their careers, from emerging talents to established professionals through the Huntington Playwriting Fellows program. Fellows receive two-year residencies during which they are provided a modest honorarium from the theatre, participate in a bi-weekly writers' collective, attend Huntington productions and events, and benefit from access to the Huntington's artistic staff and resources. Select Fellows are invited to participate in the Huntington's Summer Workshop, a two-week new work retreat, and the Breaking Ground Festival of New Work in the spring.

Past Huntington Playwriting Fellows include Ronan Noone (The Atheist, Brendan, The Second Girl), Lydia R. Diamond (Smart People, Stick Fly), Melinda Lopez (Becoming Cuba, Sonia Flew), Kirsten Greenidge (Luck of the Irish and the upcoming Milk Like Sugar), Ryan Landry (Ryan Landry's "M"), and Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro (Before I Leave You) to name a few.

The two 2015-2017 Fellows were selected from 59 applicants. The Huntington Playwriting Fellows program is supported by The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust.

Thom Dunn is a writer, musician, and new media artist, as well as a staff writer at Upworthy. His plays have been performed in New York, Boston, Hollywood, and Alaska, and his other writing - including comics, poems, essays, and fiction - has been published by Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Quirk Books, Tor.com, GrayHaven Comics, Ninth Art Press, and more. A graduate of the Clarion Writer's Workshop at University of California, San Diego and Emerson College, Mr. Dunn enjoys Oxford commas, metaphysics, and romantic clichés (especially when they involve whiskey), and firmly believes that Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" is the single greatest atrocity ever committed against mankind. He lives in Boston with his wife and way too many weird stringed instruments. You can follow his adventures on Facebook and Twitter. thomdunn.net. @thomdunn.

Deborah Salem Smith's plays include Faithful Cheaters, Love Alone, Some Things Are Private, and Boots on the Ground. In 2013 she received a novel commission from Lifespan Hospitals to write and present the one-act Defeat is an Orphan at Grand Rounds. Her play Love Alone received an Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award, an Honorable Mention by the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award, was an Indy Week Best Play of 2014 selection, and was nominated for the IRNE Award for Best New Play of 2013. Ms. Smith's previous honors include an Emerging American Artist Fulbright for playwriting in Dublin, Ireland, where she worked with the Abbey Theatre, Ireland's national theatre, and served as a Visiting Academic at the Trinity College School of Drama. Her work has been recognized by a National Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities, a Bray Visiting Scholar/Creative Artists Fellowship at Alpert Medical School at Brown University, a MacDowell Fellowship, a Colby Fellowship, and a Major Hopwood Award, as well as writing and visual arts prizes from the University of Michigan and Princeton University. Ms. Smith is also the playwright-in-residence at Trinity Repertory Company, where in 2014, she was awarded a new play commission.

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