Marisela Treviño Orta is an accidental playwright. She found her way to the genre while completing an MFA in Writing at the University of San Francisco (USF) where she studied poetry exclusively. While a student at USF, Marisela became the Resident Poet of El Teatro Jornalero!, a social justice theatre company comprised of Latinx immigrants.

Marisela’s first play BRAIDED SORROW was presented at the 2005 Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the 2006 [Inside] the Ford Summer Reading Series. BRAIDED SORROW went on to win the 2006 Chicano/Latino Literary Prize in Drama and received a 2008 world premiere at Su Teatro in Denver, CO, and won the 2009 Pen Center USA Literary Award in Drama.

Her other plays include: AMERICAN TRIAGE (2012 Repertorio Español Nuestras Voces Finalist); GHOST LIMB (2017 Brava Theatre world premiere); HEART SHAPED NEBULA (2012 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference Semi-Finalist, 2015 Shotgun Players world premiere); SHOE (2019 Kendeda Finalist); RETURN TO SENDER (Nashville Children’s Theatre commission); and WOMAN ON FIRE (2016 Camino Real Productions world premiere).

In 2011, she began writing her cycle of grim Latinx fairy tales—fairy tales for adults inspired by Latinx mythology and folklore—which include: ALCIRA; THE RIVER BRIDE (2013 National Latino Playwriting Award Co-Winner, 2016 Oregon Shakespeare Festival world premiere); WOLF AT THE DOOR (2016 Kilroys List, 2018/2019 National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere).

Marisela is an alum of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, the Playwrights Foundation’s Resident Playwright Initiative, a founding member of the Bay Area Latino Theatre Artists Network, and a member of the Latinx Theatre Commons’ national Steering Committee. In 2018 Marisela was selected as a Core Writer at The Playwrights’ Center. Marisela is also a member of the Goodman Theatre's 2018/2019 Playwrights Unit.

Currently, Marisela is working on a new cycle of worst-case scenario plays—sci-fi thriller plays which include WMB (pronounced “womb”) and NIGHTFALL. She is also adapting Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit into a six-hour epic piece of theatre.

Contact Marisela at: mariselaorta@gmail.com