Bess Welden was a 2022 National Arts Strategy Creative Community Fellow - New England for her work at the intersection of theater and social change. Her work has been developed and performed in throughout the US with Portland Stage Company, Celebration Barn Theater, White Plains Performing Arts Center, Commonweal Theater, Mad Horse Theater, Dramatic Repertory Company, Voice & Vision Theater/ENVISION retreat at Bard College, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, several Fringe Festivals, and elsewhere.

Her play Death Wings won the 2020 Maine State Prize of the Clauder Competition for New England Writers, was a semi-finalist for the O'Neill, and has received major funding support from the New England Foundation for the Arts for the world premiere at The Theater Project and Meetinghouse Arts in Maine March-April of 2023. Madeleines won the 2022 National Jewish Playwriting Contest, was a finalist for the 2021 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and will be produced by the Jewish Theatre of Bloomington in May 2023. Her play Refuge Malja won the 2020 Tel Aviv Jewish Plays Contest, was the Finalist for the 2020 National Jewish Playwriting Contest, and premiered at Portland Stage in 2018. She was an invited artist at the 2020 National Winter Playwrights Retreat in Colorado and with Company One Theatre's 2020 PlayLab Unit. She is a five-time Maine Arts Commission grant recipient, has received two national grants from the Puffin Foundation, a new show incubation residency from Celebration Barn Theater, and a week-long writing residency at Hewnoaks Artist Colony.

Bess lives and works in Portland, Maine and teaches at Colby College.