Kristen Adele Calhoun

Kristen Adele Calhoun is a writer, actor, producer and curator. She is currently an I AM SOUL Playwriting Resident at Dr. Barbara Ann Teer’s National Black Theatre and a member of the inaugural cohort of Writers in Residence at the Library of Africa and the African Diaspora. She is the founding Program Director of ArtChangeUS and co-producer of InterFest, an intersectional arts and ideas festival that began at the Harlem School of the Arts. She is the Assistant Editor of Contemporary Plays by Women of Color. Her play, Canfield Drive, about Ferguson, Missouri and the murder of Mike Brown had a rolling world premiere in 2019 at the St. Louis Black Rep and The National Black Theatre Festival. Other plays include A Pocket Full of Dandelions (Denver Center Theatre Company), Quilombo (5280 Artists Coop), With These Hands (Black American West Museum), and Aint Gonna Let Nobody (NAACP).

Television and film acting credits include House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Elementary, The Sinner, Blue Bloods, The Good Wife, and Everything I Whispered to Dorothy.

Off-Broadway & regional acting credits include Jackie and Me (Denver Center); Skeleton Crew (Premiere Stages); A Raisin in the Sun (Clarence Brown Theatre); Myrna in Transit (Ensemble Studio Theatre); Clybourne Park (Geva Theatre & Cleveland Playhouse); and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (Shadow Theatre Co.)

A native of Dallas, Texas, she is a graduate of the University of North Texas (Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting) and the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University (Master of Fine Arts in Acting). Kristen is currently splits her time between Ghana, Mexico and the United States of America.