Elle Thoni (they/them) is a queer playwright and public artist from Dakota 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 2024 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, and were recently announced as the $25,000 winner of the CMU-Alfred P. Sloan Script Competition for their small town dramady pilot about critical mineral mining in Minnesota's Northland. 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), Everwood Farmstead Foundation, and the Network of Ensemble Theaters, among others. Commissions include In the Heart of the Beast Puppet & Mask Theatre, Walking Shadow Theater Company, and Northern Lights.mn. Elle holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon University and is a proud member of The Dramatists Guild. They keep bees, and vice versa.