Daniel A. Olivas

Daniel A. Olivas, the grandson of Mexican immigrants, is an award-winning author of nine books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Widely anthologized, Olivas has written on culture and literature for The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, BOMB, and The Guardian.

Olivas’s first full-length play, WAITING FOR GODÍNEZ, was selected for the Playwrights’ Arena Summer Reading Series (2020), and The Road Theatre’s Twelfth Annual Playwrights Festival (2021). The play was also a semi-finalist for the American Blues Theater’s 2021 Blue Ink Playwriting Award. Olivas was selected for Circle X Theatre Company’s inaugural Emerging Playwrights Group to adapt his acclaimed novel, THE BOOK OF WANT (2021). Playwrights' Arena produced his first fully-staged play, WAITING, for a world premiere (2021).

Olivas earned his degree in English literature from Stanford University, and law degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. By day he is an attorney and makes his home with his wife in Southern California.