Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig

Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig is an internationally produced playwright whose trilogy The China Plays: Three Parables of Global Capital is published by Methuen Drama. The plays in the trilogy, The World of Extreme Happiness, The King of Hell's Palace, and Snow in Midsummer, have been produced in the U.K. at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Hampstead Theatre and the National Theatre; in the U.S. at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Manhattan Theater Club, Classic Stage and the Goodman Theatre; in Canada at the Shaw Festival and the National Arts Centre; and in Japan by Haiyuza Theatre. Her body of work has been honored with the Whiting Award, the Yale Drama Series Award (selected by David Hare), an Edinburgh Fringe First Award, the Keene Prize for Literature, and a United States Artist Fellowship. Frances has taught playwriting at UC Santa Barbara, Bennington College, and the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center’s College for Older Adults. She received an MFA in Writing from the James A. Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin, a BA in Sociology from Brown University, and a certificate in Ensemble-Based Physical Theatre from the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre. She lives in southwest Virginia.