Laura Marks

Laura Marks became the first recipient of the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation Award for an Emerging Playwright in 2014. She’s the author of BETHANY, produced off-Broadway at City Center by the Women’s Project (directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch, starring America Ferrera). BETHANY received Lucille Lortel nominations for Outstanding Play and Outstanding Lead Actress, won the Leah Ryan Prize for Emerging Women Writers, was a Susan Smith Blackburn finalist and runner-up for the Yale prize, and had its West Coast premiere at the Old Globe and German premiere at the National Theatre Mannheim. Her other plays include MINE (produced by the Gift Theatre, Chicago) and GATHER AT THE RIVER. Ms. Marks is a graduate of Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace playwriting program, an alumna of the Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group, and a resident playwright at New Dramatists. She's also the recipient of a Lilly Award, a Helen Merrill Award and an award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Television work includes THE GOOD FIGHT, THE EXPANSE, THE EXORCIST and BRAINDEAD. She’s a native of Kentucky, now living in New York.