Announcing the 2019 Interstate 73 Writers Group

We are thrilled to announce the 8 members of this year’s Interstate 73 Writers Group!

Will Arbery

Will Arbery is a playwright from Texas + Wyoming + seven sisters. Plays include: Plano (Clubbed Thumb), Evanston Salt Costs Climbing (New Neighborhood), and Wheelchair (3 Hole Press). He’s under commission from Playwrights Horizons, a member of The Working Farm at SPACE on Ryder Farm, a resident at Colt Coeur, and a member of EST/Youngblood. His plays have been developed at NYTW, The Vineyard, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Cape Cod Theater Project, The New Group, The Bushwick Starr, Alliance/Kendeda, and Tofte Lake Center. Dance work: Pioneer Works, MCA Chicago, Watermill Center. MFA: Northwestern. BA: Kenyon College. willarbery.com

Gina Femia

Gina Femia has written 31 full-length plays which include ALLOND(R)A (Winner: Leah Ryan Prize), We Are a Masterpiece (Winner: The Doric Wilson Award), The Mermaids' Parade (Semifinalist, The Relentless Award), Annie and the Fat Man (Honorable Mention, The Kilroys), For The Love Of (Theatre of NOTE, Original Works Publishing), and The Violet Sisters (Great Plains Theatre Conference). She is the 2019 Writer-in-Residence with Spicy Witch Productions, and an Alum of EST Youngblood, Pipeline Theatre’s PlayLab, and New Georges' Audrey Residency. Gina has received residencies with Page 73, Powerhouse, NTI at the O’Neill, SPACE on Ryder Farm, and Fresh Ground Pepper. 

Zora Howard

Zora Howard is a Harlem-bred multidisciplinary creator and performer. Her work with filmmaker Lisa Russell to turn her original poem “Biracial Hair” into a short film won an Emmy for Outstanding Advanced Media Interactivity in 2009. Since then, her work, both as a performer and writer, has been showcased on HBO, TV One, PBS, and NBC. In 2010, she was named the Inaugural Youth Poet Laureate of New York City by the Mayor's Office of New York. On stage, her performance art has given her the opportunity to perform at such venues in New York as the Apollo Theater, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, as well as internationally. Her play STEW was a 2018 Eugene O'Neil NPC Finalist and her first feature film Premature, which she co-wrote with filmmaker Rashaad Ernesto Green and starred in, is an official selection for the 2019 Sundance NEXT competition. Zora currently teaches Writing for the Stage and Screen at the Harlem School of the Arts. BA: Yale University; MFA: University of California, San Diego. 

Jessica Huang

Jessica Huang is a playwright and producer from Minneapolis. Her work includes The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin (History Theatre, 2017 Kilroy’s List, 2018 Stavis Award), Purple Cloud  (Theater Mu) and Transmissions in Advance of the Second Great Dying (Mixed Blood Theatre). She is a MacDowell Fellow, two-time Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellow, and has received awards from the Sloan Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. She cofounded and co-directs Other Tiger Productions, which pursues multidisciplinary collaborations, intentional inclusivity and re-examines traditional theater practices. She is the Resident Playwright at Chance Theater, and is a member of the Civilians R&D Group and Ars Nova Play Group. She attends the Playwrights Program at Juilliard.

Stefani Kuo (郭佳怡)

Stefani Kuo is from Hong Kong and received her B.A. from Yale. She is a playwright, poet, performer, and translator.  Her play, Architecture of Rain, premiered at Yale. She was a 2018 finalist for the Jerome and Van Lier New Voices Fellowship, the DVRF Program, semi-finalist for SPACE on Ryder Farm, and the Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep. delicacy of a puffin heart was produced as part of Corkscrew Theatre Festival and The Parsnip Ship. She has studied under Marsha Norman, Sarah Ruhl, Elizabeth Alexander, Claudia Rankine, among others. For more, please refer to www.stefanikuo.com

Kareem M. Lucas

Kareem M. Lucas is a Brooklyn-born and Harlem-based Actor/Writer/Producer/Director. His solo pieces include The Maturation of an Inconvenient Negro, From Brooklyn With Love, RATED BLACK: An American Requiem, A Boy & His Bow, and Black Is Beautiful, But It Ain’t Always Pretty. He is currently co-collaborating as a writer/performer on The Black History Museum… through Smoke & Mirrors Collaborative’s residency at HERE Arts Center. The Maturation of an Inconvenient Negro will be a part of the 2019 Mentor Project at The Cherry Lane Theatre this February. MFA: NYU Graduate Acting Program. For more info visit www.KareemMLucas.com or his Instagram @KareemMLucas

Genne Murphy

Genne Murphy is a playwright and arts educator, born and raised in Philadelphia. Her selected plays include The Girl Is Chained (2018 Relentless Award Finalist), GIANTESS (2016 Leah Ryan Award), Bluebeard’s Wife, The Skinny Killer Inside: A Fat Rage Play, Blind Door, and Hope Street and Other Lonely Places (Eugene O’Neill Conference Finalist). Her work has been developed with Azuka Theatre, Great Plains Theater Conference, PlayPenn, Philly Fringe, SF PlayGround, Theater Masters, Yale School of Drama and Yale Cabaret. She holds an MFA from the Yale School of Drama and a BFA in dramatic writing from NYU’s Tisch School.

juliany taveras

juliany taveras is a dominican-american writer, theatre-maker, & arts educator from Brooklyn, NY. Their playwriting has been nationally recognized (Kilroys List 2016, 50 Playwrights Project List 2018) & developed/staged with Crashbox Theater Company, The Lark, Corkscrew Theater Festival, The Bechdel Group, WOW Café Theatre, & Greenhouse Theater Center, among others. Their poetry & photography have also been included in various digital & print publications. juliany is a graduate of Vassar College & the St. Joseph’s College Writer’s Foundry, & currently works as a teaching artist with NYC youth while continuing to develop work that navigates bodies in diaspora. julianytaveras.com