MEET THE 26/27 EARLY-CAREER WRITERS’ GROUP

Agyeiwaa Asante is a Ghanaian- American playwright and administrator. Her full-length plays include and have been developed with, DAINTY (BOLD NYC’s 2020 Festival, Mosaic Theatre, Playwrights Realms Scratchpad series, Firehouse Theatre), Agape (Cygnet’s Finish Line Commission, Round House’s Capital New Play Festival, Boston Court Pasadena’s Playwrights Group) and The Half-Sibling Play (Fire This Time Festival, Moxie Theatre’s Lamoise New Works Festival, IAMA Theatre’s New Works Festival). She holds commissions from University of Maryland’s NextNow Festival, Single Carrot Theatre and Round House Theatre. She is the 2020 recipient of The Bret Adams and Paul Reisch Foundation’s Ollie Award and the 2026 Rhimes Unsung Voices Playwriting Commission Recipient. She is a member of The Kilroys Web 2023, The Playwrights Cohort at PlayPenn Class of 2024-25 and the Dramatists Guild. She is currently the Artistic/ Literary Administrator and Intern Manager at the Ojai Playwrights Conference. B.A. in Theatre from the University of Maryland, College Park. M.F.A. in Playwriting from University of California San Diego.

Ida Cuttler is a playwright/actor and former company member of The Chicago Neo-Futurists from 2015–22, where she wrote over 200 plays for Chicago’s longest-running late-night show The Infinite Wrench. Ida received her M.F.A. in playwriting from the David Geffen School Drama at Yale (Class of 2025), where she wrote Sort, Moe is a Dick, and Running Play. Ida’s other writing and performing credits include Comfortable Shoes, Save the Cave, and the Jeff-nominated Wildcats. She is a 2025-2026 Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Award Finalist, A 2026 finalist for the American Blues Theater’s Blue Ink award and the 2025 winner of the Chesley/Bumbalo Award. Currently. She and her partner co-own a bakery in Sunset Park.

Carlin Feck is a Brooklyn-based writer originally from Central New York. Her work has been seen at Chain Theatre, The Palace Reading Series in Greenpoint, and in goodstory magazine. Carlin is a graduate of The State University of New York at New Paltz, and her work explores life post-grad and pre-death.

Fiona Gorry-Hines (she/they) is a Massachusetts-born, New York-educated, LA-sojourning, and now (finally, for real this time) New-York-again-based playwright and writing teacher. Their work, which uses comedy and surrealism to explore issues of class, environment, and gender/sexuality, has been developed by, produced by, or seen at The Road Theatre Company, The Larking House, Access Theatre, and Dixon Place. Fiona has been a semifinalist for the Clubbed Thumb Biennial Commission and the O’Neill Playwright’s Conference and a finalist for the Thomas Wolfe International Play Prize. MFA Columbia University. fionagorryhines.com.

Salwa Meghjee is a Muslim-Indian-Floridian writer. She is a graduate of the Playwrights Program at Juilliard, and holds a BA from UC Berkeley and an MFA from Northwestern. She has developed plays with her and collaborator Sarah Marlin’s production company Pizza Party Press, as well as Soho Rep, Playwrights’ Center, The New Victory, Pipeline Theatre, and more. She is an ensemble member of the New York Neo-Futurists, and by day she is the Partnerships Associate at Play On Shakespeare. Her plays are surreal, darkly comic, lean into the serendipity of live theater, and illuminate the big unnameable feelings we all experience. They have fun titles such as Love Jihad <3 (Clubbed Thumb Biennial Semi-Finalist), U-Haul Mesbians, Ender’s Gay, D-Wording (EnActe NYC New Works Incubator Winner), Partners (Exponential Fest 2027), Never Forget That Jasper Cullen Was a Confederate Soldier, and, written with her twin sister Samah, The Better Banana™ (Brooklyn Publishers).

Derick Edgren Otero is an alleged playwright from Rockford, Illinois. Development includes Lambda Literary LGBTQ+ Emerging Writers Retreat with faculty Victor I. Cazares, La MaMa Umbria with guest artist Todd London, Voyage Theatre Company, November Theatre, Art Garage, Cherry Lane Theatre, and Rockford New Play Festival, curated by Nathan Alan Davis.

Jacob K Robinson is a writer from small town Texas. His plays have been semi-finalists for the O’Neill, Ojai, and Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and his poem The Pool was a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize, published in the Winter 23 Edition. He likes a good pair of black Levi’s, mowing the lawn, and an afternoon baseball game. Ask him about how talented his friends are. MFA: Columbia University. He is doing his best.

Amy B. Tiong is a Chinese-American playwright, screenwriter, and film director whose genre-bending work explores identity, violence, and healing. Raised by immigrant parents, she grew up around her family’s Chinese fast-food restaurant, shaping her interest in stories about survival and belonging. She is a 2025 Dramatists Guild Hansberry-Lilly Playwriting Fellow, a 2026 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation/EST commission recipient, and her play Dolls was selected for A Red Orchid Theatre’s Incubator Series. Dolby Institute and the NAACP have supported her film work, with short films premiering at AMC Lincoln Center and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. A Gates Millennium Scholar, Amy is passionate about educational access and has taught with Northwestern’s NHSI program. She earned her MFA from Northwestern and studied film at NYU. amybtiong.com @amybtiong