BOSTON: Huntington Theatre Company has announced Thom Dunn and Deborah Salem Smith as the 2015—17 Huntington Playwriting Fellows. They will both receive an honorarium of an undisclosed amount and a two-year residency at the theatre, where they will participate in a bi-weekly writers’ collective and attend productions and events.
The fellows are also invited to participate in Huntington’s Breaking Ground Festival of New York in the spring and two-week new work retreat over the summer.
Dunn is a writer, musician, new media artist, and a staff writer at Upworthy. He is a graduate of Emerson College and the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Workshop at the University of California–San Diego. His plays have been produced in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and Valdez, Ak. His comics, poetry, essays, and fiction writing has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Quirk Books, Tor.com, GrayHaven Comics, Ninth Art Press, and more.
Smith’s plays include Faithful Cheaters, Love Alone, Some Things Are Private, and Boots on the Ground. Her play Love Alone received an Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award and an honorable mention by the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award. She was awarded an Emerging American Artists Fulbright for playwriting, and traveled to Dublin, Ireland where she worked with the Abbey Theatre and served as a visiting academic at the Trinity College School of Drama. In 2013, she received a novel commission from Lifespan Hospitals to write and present the one-act Defeat is an Orphan at Grand Rounds. She served as the 2014 playwright-in-residence of Trinity Repertory Company, where she was awarded a new play commission.
The 2015–2017 Fellows were selected from 59 applicants. The Huntington Playwriting Fellows program is supported by the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust.
