Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition: 2005/2006

Winner: Kenneth Lin 

said SAÏD

Kenneth Lin is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter whose plays Exclusion, Kleptocracy, Life on Paper, Warrior Class, Intelligence-Slave, Fallow, Po Boy Tango, And said Saïd have garnered widespread acclaim. His awards and honors include the Princess Grace Award, Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition, L. Arnold Weissberger Award, and the TCG Edgerton New Play Prize. He has written and produced several film and television projects and was nominated for an Emmy for his work on House of Cards. Education: Yale School of Drama, US Fulbright Fellowship. Upcoming: Farewell My Concubine with composer Jason Robert Brown. Kenneth currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife and sons. 

Michael Cooper 

Sunfish

(Composer/Lyricist) BROADWAY: It Shoulda Been You (Outer Critics Circle Nomination, Additional Lyrics). OFF-BROADWAY: City Of (Music). REGIONAL: Love, Always (Music & Lyrics), Marguerite (Second To Nun) (Music), Love & Other Destinations (Lyrics). LONDON: Luna Park (Lyrics), From Page To Stage. KOREA: Sunfish (Co-Book/Lyrics) Top Jury Honor DIMF. VIRTUAL: The Duchess Carpathia Bouffray, Alternative FAQs and Aprés-Ski (and live: JE SUIS L’ART) (Music). 2005 Jonathan Larson Award Winner. Williams College; NYU GMTWP. Selected for NAMT, ASCAP/Disney Workshop, and Johnny Mercer Writers Grove at Goodspeed Musicals. Recent commissions: Unframed (Gund Gallery, Kenyon College), Alice In... (Kenyon College) and Remembering Tomorrow: The Lives of Edgar Cayce (Zeiders American Dream Theater).  Michael serves as the Executive Artistic Director of the Paradise Theatre in Paonia, CO. www.michaelcoopermusicandlyrics.com @MichaelCooperMusicAndLyrics on Facebook @coopstah on Twitter and Instagram 

Hyeyoung Kim

Sunfish

Hyeyoung Kim is a Jonathan Larson Award Winner. Selected for NAMT, ASCAP/Disney Workshop, TRU, Composer/Librettist lab at New Dramatists, Johnny Mercer Songwriting Project and Sokoloff Arts Fellow with Town Stages and Sokoloff Arts. Ewha Womans Univ.; NYU GMTWP. Sunfish (Co-Book/Music)- Daegu International Musical Theatre Festival(Top Jury Honor), Stoneham Theater(BWW Boston Best musical in a mid-size theater); Falling (Music)- Songwriters Showcase NAMT, Creative Factory, Korea; CAFE-IN(Music)- Live theater, Korea. Toured to Tokyo and Osaka, Japan; Luna Park (Music)- MTF’s 4@15, NYC, Oregon Performance Lab, From Page to Stage, London, APAC’s Benefit Reading Concert, NYFA’s New Work Series; Vampire in a Box (Co-Lyrics/Music)- SHArthall, Korea; Days of Rage (Book/Music)- NYTB’s New Works pre-premiere series, NYTB’s Choreography Lab, Town Stage’s Workshop; READY TO FLY(Music)- New-Wave Award (Korea Musical Awards); A Story No One Knows (Book/Music)- NYTB’s New Works pre-premiere series, student workshop at Emerson. Journey Around My Bedroom (Music)- NY Times Top 5 pick zoom play for young audiences. www.hyeyoungkimmusic.com @hyeyoungkimmusic

Lynne "L.A." Kuemmel 

Monongahela House

L.A. Kuemmel is a playwright-turned-novelist with a love of immersive world-building and strong female characters. At the age of 11, she discovered Robin McKinley’s The Hero and the Crown and became a life-long fantasy and sci-fi lover. She grew up in small towns in the Mid-West and Deep South where she dreamed frequently of running away from home. Once in New York City she joined the anarchist collective of the WOW Cafe where her full-length plays, Thicker Than Water and I May Never Go Home, debuted, along with several comic skits and cabaret performances. 

In 2006 she was honored as a Kendeda Playwright by the Alliance Theater of Atlanta for her ensemble historical drama Monongahela House. That same year her teleplay for “The Work of 50 Men” was awarded a Sloan Foundation grant for production at WQED. It aired on public television and garnered a Bronze Telly. Now in Los Angeles, she has developed several screenplays and collaborated with Fell Swoop writer’s workshop on their staged productions. Kuemmel is a graduate of Playwrights Horizons Theater School at NYU and holds an MFA from Carnegie Mellon School of Drama’s Dramatic Writing Program. Song of Reckoning is her first novel. 

Brian Tucker 

Sins of the Father 

Brian Tucker is a native of the South Side of Chicago, currently living in Brooklyn. He is the youngest ever recipient of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Fellowship administered through the Juilliard School, where he served a two-year fellowship under Marsha Norman and Christopher Durang. Brian’s plays include The Great Defeat of Coltrane Grey (2004 New York International Fringe Festival production; Barrington Stage Company workshop; Juilliard School staged reading), Sins of the Father (Finalist in the Alliance Theatre’s Kendeda Playwriting Competition; in development with Perseverance Theater Company), Bathing Van Gogh (workshop production Juilliard School) and The St. James Infirmary (production Juilliard School, directed by Marion McClinton). He is the recipient of the Herrick Theater Foundation Award for Playwrights and two LeCompte du Nouy Prizes, administered through Lincoln Center. 

William Whitehurst 

He Who Outruns Rainstorms

William Whitehurst is the author of numerous dramatic works which have been produced in major markets in the UK and the US, including Edinburgh, London, New York and Los Angeles. These stagings were either at fringe festivals (like San Francisco Fringe, New York Fringe and Edinburgh fringe), and/or “storefront” or “pub style” venues.  

Awards include Best Play, Renegade New Original Works Festival, August, 2018 (He Who Outruns Rainstorms- a Kendeda finalist);  the Hollywood Fringe Encore Award 2016 (Cockroach Dialogues);  Best Play and Best Overall Production, San Francisco International Fringe Festival 2008 (Knuckleball); ; Best Play, Eclectic Theater’s Hurricane Season of One Acts, Los Angeles, 2004 (Menage a Trois); and first place, Theater League of South Florida Annual New Plays Prize 2002 (Mosshead).   

He is a co-founder with actor/director Andy McQuade of Second Skin Theatre, a London-based theatre collective. The company produced many of his plays over the years including American Football, Pigeon Man Apocalypse, Knuckleball, The Hideous Face of Love, Rasputin and The Cockroach Dialogues. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing/Drama from Florida International University and an MFA in Theatre and Dramatic Writing from the University of Southern California.  He currently teaches history and English at the International French School of Singapore.