My sensibility as a writer has been shaped most by what I have loved and what I have lost. Having grown up on a small farm in Oregon, I love nature and feel very close to its wonderful wildness -- the water and the woods. I lost my husband eleven years ago, and I am still grappling with that -- and the large, existential questions his death provoked in me. I want to learn how to cut more deeply into myself to craft my plays, and how to then craft those bloody pages more carefully into something I can call art. I have recently begun to learn the craft of writing opera libretti, and found that I love working with composers. I am excited to see where this new road will lead me.

I have been writing full-time for the last five years, and this concentration on my craft has been both joyful and deepening. My work tends to focus on large social issues as well as the more intimate questions of the human heart. I have written about ecological issues (Song of Extinction; Magellanica), science and ethics (The Study, or Reading to Vegetables), and war (Heads). My play about guns and gun control (The Gun Show) premiered in Chicago in summer of 2014, and has had more than fifty productions across the country since then. I feel like it is the responsibility of a playwright to ask big questions.

I love working with other passionate theater-makers -- directors and actors and designers. I hope to continue to find homes for my plays, but also theater homes for myself, where I can play with great, dedicated, hard-working people to bring stories to life on the stage.

I have several exciting new projects underway now, and am looking forward to what the new year will bring.