Rachel Teagle Receives Leah Ryan's FEWW Prize for THEEVERANDAFTER, Set for Reading 6/11

Playwright Rachel Teagle has been awarded Leah Ryan's FEWW Prize for Emerging Women Playwrights 2012 for her play TheEverAndAfter. Please join family, friends, and fans of Leah Ryan for a reading of the play, directed by Robert Ross Parker (co-artistic director of the Obie Award-winning Vampire Cowboys) on Monday, June 11, at 7:00pm at the Atlantic Stage 2 (330 West 16th Street in Manhattan). While admission to TheEverAndAfter is free, seating is limited and reservations are encouraged. To reserve seats, email: Reservations@leahryansFEWW.com.

Rachel Teagle is honored to represent Leah Ryan's FEWW this year. A playwright, director, and comedian, she grew up in the Silicon Valley and graduated from Carleton College with a degree in theater. She has had the privilege of working with many distinguished and supportive theaters in Minneapolis and Atlanta including the Workhaus Collective, Bedlam Theatre, Synchronicity, the Horizon Theater Apprentice Company and Serenbe Playhouse. Rachel also recently planned and executed the very first Atlanta Fringe Festival. Her previous works include: Orange: a farce (about terrorism), Merry Christmas Big Hungry Bear!,Covert Operations, Pain in the Neck (Essential Theater Playwriting Award Finalist), and adaptations of The Ugly Duckling and Alice in Wonderland.

Each year Leah Ryan’s Fund for Emerging Women Writers (Leah Ryan’s FEWW) awards an annual prize to an emerging woman playwright in recognition of an outstanding work written for the English-speaking theater. Past winners of the FEWW prize include Laura Marks for Bethany (2011) and Megan Mostyn-Brown for The Rest of Your Life (2010).

The Leah Ryan Fund for Emerging Women Writers intends both to encourage brilliant and unrecognized women playwrights with an annual cash prize and a New York City showcase of the winning work. In addition, the fund plans to provide financial support to women writers afflicted with a serious illness. Both the prize and the work honor the memory and artistry of Leah Ryan (1964-2008.) For more information about both Leah’s FEWW and the prize see www.leahryansFEWW.com.

Leah Ryan's FEWW and its annual prize were established to honor the memory of Leah Ryan, and to encourage and support the work of women writers. It is the purpose of the Prize to perpetuate the integrity, compassion and creativity that Leah herself possessed and inspired in others.

A playwright, essayist, and true woman of letters, Leah Ryan's plays have been performed all over the United States. Her play Bleach, a dark comedy about the legacy of the Armenian genocide, received the Maibaum Award for plays dealing with issues of social justice. Ryan taught playwriting, English, and creative writing to a wide variety of students, including those at the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising, where she was a professor in the Arts and Communications department and founder of their Writing Center. She also worked with groups of high school and college students at Vassar and New York Stage and Film's Powerhouse Theater Apprentice Training Program where members of the Apprentice Company have performed several of her plays and adaptations. She received a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts for her work with Epic Theatre Centre, creating modern adaptations of classic plays with groups of middle and high school students.

She graduated with honors from Smith College as an Ada Comstock Scholar, winning the Denis Johnston prize for excellence in playwriting three times, and the Jill Cummins MacLean Prize once. Ms. Ryan went on to earn her Artist Diploma in Playwriting at Juilliard and her MFA from the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, where she won the Distinguished Teaching award and was twice chosen to take part in the annual Iowa Playwrights Festival.

Her publications include the literary anthology For Here or To Go, and Even More Monologues by Women for Women, essays in The Best of Temp Slave, as well as work in many small magazines. Her play Pigeon was published by Playscripts, Inc. Her short work also appeared in 400 Words, including the debut issue. She was Fiction Editor and a regular columnist at Punk Planet magazine.

Leah Ryan died of leukemia on June 12, 2008 in New York City. Her family and friends believe this prize is the truest and most meaningful way to remember her exemplary life and extraordinary work.

The Leah Ryan's Fund for Emerging Women Writers intends both to encourage brilliant and unrecognized women playwrights with an annual cash prize and a New York City showcase of the winning work. In addition, the fund plans to provide financial support to women writers afflicted with a serious illness. Both the prize and the work honor the memory and artistry of Leah Ryan (1964–2008).

The board is comprised of colleagues who worked with, taught, and taught with Leah, and friends and fans who admired her work.

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