Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition: 2021/2022

Winner: Eliana Pipes 

Dream Hou$e 

Eliana Pipes is a playwright and filmmaker based in her hometown of Los Angeles. Her plays include Bite Me (world premiere off-Broadway WP Theater & Colt Coeur); Dream Hou$e (world premiere co-production Alliance Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, and Baltimore Center Stage, published by Concord Samuel French); Hoops (world premiere commission Milwaukee Chamber Theater). She holds commissions from Two River Theater and South Coast Repertory. Her work has been developed or presented at the New York Theatre Workshop Dartmouth Residency, Playwright's Realm Scratchpad Series, South Coast Repertory Pacific Playwright’s Festival, NNPN National New Play Showcase, Old Globe Powers New Voices Festival, Fire This Time Festival, and Drama League DirectorFest. Her writing awards include the Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellowship, Alliance/Kendeda Prize, Leah Ryan Prize, KCACTF Harold and Mimi Steinberg Award, National Latine Playwrights Award, and Dr. Floyd Gaffney Award. As a filmmaker she's been awarded the Academy Gold Fellowship for Women through AMPAS, the WAVE Grant and Outfest x Colin Higgins Youth Filmmaker Grant. She was selected for the Orchard Project's Episodic Lab for her pilot The Young Lords and is a member of the Sundance Institute Latine Collab Scholarship. BA English Columbia University, MFA Playwriting Boston University. www.elianapipes.com

Alanna Coby 

Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue 

Alanna Coby is a playwright, teaching artist, and performer based in New York. Alanna's work has been celebrated by the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Award, the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, the Jane Chambers Award for Excellence in Feminist Playwriting, and The Civilians, and her work supported through workshops and residences with the Alliance Theatre, Mabou Mines, The Drama League, Catskill Mountain Shakespeare, ShoutOut Saugerties, Dixon Place, SITI Company, The Brick, and IRT Theater. She is a proud founding member of The Syndicate, an ensemble theatre company that produces new plays by women, queer and trans+ artists, and she is also the creator of Cooking Rage, a satire cooking blog, and Ugly Comics, a comic series about the creative process. Alanna has taught playwriting at Sarah Lawrence College and the Eileen Fisher Leadership Institute and is currently a grant writer/development consultant for YWCA Ulster County and the O+ Festival in Kingston, New York. ​Alanna holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU, class of 2021, where she was the recipient of a Tisch Graduate Award Scholarship and the Dalio Family Merit Scholarship. BA Sarah Lawrence College, 2008. 

Carlyn Flint 

Net of Worth 

After graduating from USC, Carlyn moved back to her chosen hometown of Tulsa, OK.  Here she has immersed herself in a mission to make, share, and teach in a way that benefits her community.  When it comes to playwriting, she recently won Heller Theater's "Jack Dicky Brick" award for her episodic comedy about online dating.  This brutally honest romp, Adventures of a Doormat, was voted through for a next episode seven times in a row.  She is also working with Blackjack Rewrite Company to present a reading of her play Wonderland is Real as a fundraiser for a life-changing program called Women In Recovery.  WIR provides an alternative path of rehabilitation for mothers facing long prison sentences in Oklahoma. 

In other creative endeavors, she is focused on helping kids learn to read, write and create.  She just illustrated and published a children's book called Our Lady Gaia as a call to love and care for the earth, and is also spearheading a reading and writing after school program called ARTademics using her original arts-infusion curriculum.  Lastly, and the most fun, she's writing a YA sci-fi novel!  

Gloria Majule 

Culture Shock 

Gloria Majule is a playwright from Dodoma, Tanzania presently residing in Seattle, WA. She seeks to tell stories that bring multiple black voices together from across the world, and are accessible to black audiences no matter where they are. She writes plays about Africans and the African diaspora. Gloria is the 2023 winner of the Leah Prize from the Leah Ryan Fund. She has been commissioned by Audible and Atlantic Theater Company. Gloria's plays have been developed at American Blues Theater, Vassar's Powerhouse Theater, The New Group, Premiere Stages at Kean University, Great Plains Theater Commons, A is For, Alliance Theatre, Westport Country Playhouse and Aye Defy. She has been a finalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, Blue Ink Playwriting Award, Alliance/Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition, and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival.Gloria graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University with a BA in Performing & Media Arts and Spanish, and holds an MFA in Playwriting from Yale School of Drama. 

Kyle J. McCloskey 

Where the Lovelight Gleams 

Kyle J McCloskey (He/They/Anything Respectful) is originally from Philadelphia, now residing in Chicago, IL. His work was seen or developed with The Alliance Theatre, Studio Theatre, The American Playwriting Foundation, The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, The Great Plains Theatre Conference, American Theater Company, Victory Gardens Theater Company, Woven Theatre, Collaboraction Theatre Company, Stage Left Theater Company, the University of California - Los Angeles, and Loyola University Chicago. He is a two-time recipient of the Paula Vogel Prize from the Kennedy Center, runner-up for The Harold and Mimi Steinberg National Student Playwriting Award, runner-up for the Jean Kennedy Smith Prize from the Kennedy Center, a Semifinalist for the Relentless Award from the American Playwriting Foundation, a Finalist for the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition, a Finalist for the Blue Ink Award from American Blues Theater, a Finalist for the Princess Grace Award, a finalist for the Jerome Fellowship from the Playwright's Center, and a semi-finalist for the O’Neill Playwright’s Conference. He is a past recipient of the James B. Pendleton Foundation Prize, The MacGowan Family Playwriting Fellowship, a Hollywood Foreign Press Awards Fellowship, and the George Burns & Gracie Allen Fellowship in Comedy. MFA UCLA, BA Loyola University Chicago