Melisa Tien

Melisa Tien is a New York-based playwright, lyricist, and librettist.  She is the author of the plays The Boyd Show, Best Life, Yellow Card, Red Card, and Familium Vulgare.  She is a co-author of the music-theatre works Swell and Mary.  Swell is a part of the 2019 Summer Sublet Series: Co-Op at HERE Arts Center. Mary will have a reading at New Dramatists in Fall 2019. Best Life will be part of the 2019-2020 season at JACK in March 2020. Her play Yellow Card, Red Card was presented as part of the Ice Factory Festival in 2017 at the New Ohio Theatre, and prior to that had a workshop production at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 2016. A resident playwright of New Dramatists, Melisa is also a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Playwriting/Screenwriting, a recipient of the Theater Masters Visionary Playwright Award, and a member of the BMI Musical Theater Workshop. She has been a resident of the MacDowell Colony and the Millay Colony, and was a member of the 2010-2012 Women’s Project Lab. She has presented work at the Great Plains Theatre Conference, the Women Playwrights International Conference, and the National Asian American Theatre Conference and Festival. She has taught playwriting at SUNY Purchase, the National Theater Institute, and the School of Visual Arts, and will be teaching at Sarah Lawrence College starting Fall of 2019. She holds a BA from UCLA, an MFA from Columbia University, and a culinary diploma from the French Culinary Institute.