Gloria Bond Clunie is an award-winning playwright, director and educator.

Ms. Clunie is a founding member of the Playwriting Ensemble at Chicago’s Regional Tony Award winning Victory Gardens Theater where her plays North Star, Living Green and Shoes premiered. She is also the founding Artistic Director of Evanston’s Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatrewhere she directed scores of productions including Ain't Misbehavin', Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, Home and Raisin.

Other plays include Sweet Water Taste, SMOKE, Sing, Malindy, Sing!, BLU, Buck Naked, DRIP, Patricia McKissack’s Mirandy and Brother Wind, Bankruptcy, Merry Kwanzaa, Mercy Rising and QUARK. She is published by Dramatic Publishing and in the anthologies Seven Black Plays, Reimagining A Raisin In the Sun and The Bully Plays. Her plays have been produced and workshopped in a variety of theaters including Victory Gardens Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre, ETA, Alliance Theatre, Triad Stage, Her Story Theatre, MPAACT, Chicago Children’s Theatre, American Blues Theatre, Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre, Penobscot Theatre and Orlando Shakespeare Theater.

Ms. Clunie has been recognized for her work in theater and education by the NAACP, AKA and DST Sororities, American Alliance for Theatre and Education and the Vision Keepers. Awards include a Chicago Jeff, a Children’s Theater Foundation of America Orlin Corey Medallion, a Scott McPherson, a Dramatists Guild Fellowship, Theodore Ward African-American Playwriting Prizes, New York’s New Professional Theater Award, Chicago Black Theatre Alliance Awards, NEA and Illinois Arts Council Fellowships, the Evanston Mayor’s Award for the Arts and most recently the 2018 YWCA YWomen Leadership Award.

This Northwestern graduate (B.A. Theater, MFA-Directing) is honored her drama Shoes was included in the 2015 Women Playwrights International Conference in Cape Town, South Africa; that SMOKE was featured in Chicago’s Her Story Theater Writers Series, Dayton Playhouse’s 2015 FutureFest, 2015 New Works at Playhouse On The Square in Memphis, 2016 Barter Theatre’s Appalachian Festival of Playwrights in Virginia, and a part of 2017 New Play Lab at Florida Rep. In July 2016, with the goal to explore violence in America, Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre commissioned and premiered A Shot-#Love Stories inspired by Black Lives Matter.
In 2014, Ms. Clunie was an Artist-In-Residence at Byrdcliffe Arts Colony in Woodstock New York and at 360 Xochi Quetzal Arts Residency, Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico where she completed BLU- as both a two act drama and a new musical exploring bullying. BLU was read at The Growing Stage Children’s Theater of New Jersey New Play Festival, was the featured play in the AATE Utah Playwrights In Our Schools Program and workshopped in Arizona at 2017 WRITE NOW, a TYA collaboration between Childsplay Theatre and Indiana Rep. Thanks to a grant from the Children’s Theatre Foundation of America, BLU-The Musical was workshopped in September 2017. Her comedy Buck Naked was featured in the inaugural 2017 Women Playwrights Initiative at Ivoryton Playhouse in Connecticut.

In January 2018, she served as both playwright and director for My Wonderful Birthday Suit commissioned by Chicago Children’s Theatre, while her adaptation of The Last Stop on Market Street (2016 Caldecott/ 2016 Newbery/ 2016 Coretta Scott King Book Awards) premiered in November at Children’s Theatre of Charlotte, went to Dallas Children’s Theatre and Bay Area Children’s Theatre in 2020, and will be at Milwaukee’s First Stage in 2022. She is excited her comedy Sweet Water Taste enjoyed nightly standing ovations in 2019 at Atlanta’s Horizon Theatre Company is part of the 2021-22 Orlando Shakes Season. Currently, she is working on the musical SKY, begun at California’s Djerassi Resident Artists Program and fueled by her love of Chicago architecture; adapting Giraffes Can’t Dance- The Musical and THE Hula- Hoopin’ Queen; and inspired by her love of rollercoasters, she is developing Tall Enough for the 2021-22 Cunningham Commission at The Theatre School of DePaul University.

Originally from Henderson, North Carolina, she and her husband Basil live in Evanston, Illinois and are the proud parents of Aurelia, an amazing theater artist and daughter.