Sonya Hayden is an award-winning composer, lyricist, librettist, and playwright from Central Virginia, now based in New York. Her work is rooted at the intersection of hilarity and heartbreak, the political and the personal. She is particularly drawn to exploring multi-faceted female characters and the forces that constrain, shape, and liberate them. She is the recipient of the MAC John Wallowitch Songwriting Award, ScreenCraft Stage Play Competition Mentorship Prize, and Kurt Weill Foundation Songbook Award. She was an artist-in-residence in playwriting at Marble House Project and has been a Semi-Finalist for the O’Neill National Music Theater Conference, Top 6 for Michigan State University’s New Musical Laboratory, a Finalist for the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Play Contest, and a Finalist for Circle in the Square Theatre School’s Emerging Writers Residency. Her work has been performed at the Lincoln Center Festival, New Perspectives Theatre, the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, Little Fish Theatre, the NY Public Library for the Performing Arts, Urban Stages, the Pittsburgh New Works Festival, the Duplex, the Edinburgh International Festival, and more.

She is a member of the BMI Advanced Musical Theatre & Librettists Workshops, NY Songwriters Alliance, Dramatists Guild, and ASCAP and previously the Recording Academy’s Musical Theater Mentorship Program, New Perspectives Theatre’s Full-Length Play LAB, Maestra Music’s Mentorship Program, and Princeton Triangle Club’s Writers Workshop (Milton Lyon Award for Outstanding Writing). She has been a Script Supervisor at Audible and is the Co-Director of Maestra Music's Mentorship Program. She holds a Master’s in Playwriting with Distinction from the University of Edinburgh, a Bachelor's of Music and Minor in Theater from Princeton University, and the world record for cups of Earl Grey tea downed while writing. sonyahayden.com @sonyahayden11