Elle Thoni (they/them) is a queer playwright and public artist from Dakhóta land in Minneapolis, MN. In search of wildness amidst this Great Unraveling, they write plays about shapeshifters, emergent ecologies, and unlikely kinship. Drawing from a divergent background in ensemble-devised performance, large-scale puppetry, and documentary theater, Elle creates pieces that are as lush and dynamic as the living systems they are inspired by. They are the recipient of the Rosa Parks Playwriting Award, second place Paula Vogel Playwriting Award and Mark Twain Comic Playwriting Award, and a Planet Earth Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center, a finalist for the Jerome Fellowship in Playwriting from The Playwrights’ Center, and a semi-finalist for the Princess Grace Playwriting Award. Their work has been supported by the New Harmony Project, the Mid-America Theater Conference, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (Minneapolis-St. Paul) and the Network of Ensemble Theaters, among others, and has been commissioned by In the Heart of the Beast Puppet & Mask Theatre, Walking Shadow Theater Company, and Northern Lights.mn. Elle is a 2024 MFA Dramatic Writing candidate at Carnegie Mellon University (Jaödeogë - Pittsburgh) as well as a proud member of The Dramatists Guild. They keep bees, and vice versa.