Born in Saigon and raised on Boston’s north shore, Quan Barry is the Lorraine Hansberry Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Barry is the author of seven books of fiction and poetry, including the recent novel WHEN I'M GONE, LOOK FOR ME IN THE EAST, and also WE RIDE UPON STICKS, which O: OPRAH MAGAZINE describes as, “Spellbinding, wickedly fun . . . Each sentence fizzes like a just-opened bottle of New Coke.”

Barry’s first play, THE MYTILENIAN DEBATE, was a finalist for both the Eugene O’Neill Center’s National Playwrights Conference and the Lark Play Development Center’s Playwrights’ Week in New York City, and was produced for the stage in 2022 by Forward Theater. Her second play, TENEBRAE, was also a finalist for the Eugene O’Neill Center’s National Playwrights Conference, and a new work, PER ASPERA, was a 2022 finalist for the Ashland New Play Festival.

In 2012, Barry was commissioned to write a ten-minute piece for Book Wings, an arts exchange established by President Obama and then President Dmitry Medvedev and funded by the Bureau of Cultural and Educational Affairs at the U.S. State Department. “Three Variations on a Theme” was performed and broadcast simultaneously at the University of Iowa and the Moscow Art Theatre, the same space where Chekov premiered much of his work.

She has received NEA fellowships in both poetry and fiction. In 2016, Barry was a jurist for the NEA; similarly, the following year she was a judge for the PEN Open Book Award. She is a member of the Dramatist Guild.