Class of 2024
Akosua-Asamoabea Ampofo is a Ghanaian filmmaker who graduated with a Film degree from Bryn Mawr College in 2019. Most recently, she crewed for an award-winning documentary, When Women Speak, about Ghanaian women activism during the country’s military rule. Outside of documentary work, she works at a social media and digital advertising agency full time. She is interested in music and photography and with the help of Duolingo, she could be speaking— or at least not butchering— 4 languages by the end of the year. But currently, she speaks two and a half. Ampofo’s writing interests investigate issues of Identity Politics, Masculinities, History, and Minority Representations in the Media
Makeda Declet is a Guyanese-American playwright, actress, and producer with a proclivity to mention her Brooklyn upbringing (and her unwavering love of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer) at least twice, per conversation! She graduated from New York University, with a BFA in Theater. Her passion lies in telling stories about Black family dynamics, self-discovery, and addiction through the lens of Black, Queer protagonists. Currently based in Los Angeles, Makeda is a co-founder of Circle of Writers LA (sponsored by Final Draft and Coverfly) and the Ignition Project at EST/LA. She developed her play HAMMER at Moving Art’s MADLab development program and is developing her television pilot, Putting On, with Story 27’s Writers’ Colony. She is an HBO All- Access Fellowship and Sundance Uprise Grant finalist, as well as a member of SAG/AFTRA.
Joslyn Housley is an American playwright, librettist, editor, and mom who has called Chicago, London, New York, and northern France her home. Joslyn writes about journeys—physical, spiritual, emotional—and the people who take them. She is the author of the award-winning historical drama, The Silver Thread and the story writer for the 2021 film Hal King, an r&b opera based on Shakespeare’s Henry 4 parts 1 & 2. She also teaches historical fiction writing for the publishing house, midnight & indigo. She is currently working on a musical. Joslyn’s work has been recognized by: the Women Playwrights International Conference/Montreal; Landing Theatre’s New American Voices; the Bay Area Playwrights Festival; the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference; the Great Plains Theatre Conference; and the Hudson Valley Writer’s Center.
Kate McMorran is a writer and actor who has a BA in Theatre and English from Muhlenberg College. She moved to NYC to become an actor, ended up working in a casting office, and finally landed at Northwestern to pursue her MFA in writing for Stage and Screen. Her work has been produced by the Playbill Virtual Theatre Festival, Portland Actors Conservatory, and The Future is Female Festival, and has been published by Smith and Kraus and various lit mags. Kate hopes to use writing to center female pleasure and dismantle patriarchal systems. She also loves to obsessively stare at her houseplants and can usually be found reading at least three books at once.
Class of 2025
Aisha Hamid is a poet and writer from Lahore, Pakistan. She was shortlisted by the Zeenat Haroon Rashid Writing Prize for Women, 2019, and received an honorable mention by The Berlin Writing Prize 2019. She is a Poetry Reader at The Adroit Journal, a fellow at Qalambaaz 2023, Pakistan’s first screenwriting lab, and an alum of the South Asian Write Beyond Borders mentorship program, 2021, and the LUMS Young Writers’ Workshop ’19. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Vallum Magazine, The Aleph Review, Yoda Press, and elsewhere. Her writing centers around South Asian women’s lived experiences, their agency and the multiple meanings it holds for them, as well as mental illness, generational trauma, and sisterhood.
Frank Garland is a playwright and performer, originally from Seattle.
He graduated in 2020 with a BA in English and a minor in Theater from Harvard University. He loves improv comedy and roleplaying games and all things playing pretend. His plays have been staged and workshopped in Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, and often explore themes of escapism and performativity and the ways the people we pretend to be reveal things about the people we are. He spends his free time reading fantasy novels and listening to old union songs.
Elliot Schiff is a playwright and comedian from Los Angeles, California. Based in Chicago, Elliot has two pet rabbits.
Tiana Williams is a writer, filmmaker, and performer from Kansas City, Missouri. She earned a BFA in filmmaking from Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri in 2018. Since graduating, Tiana has found herself dipping into different industries from education to business administration trying to find where she fits. Ultimately, nothing compared to her love for writing and she was compelled to answer the call to create. Tiana has always found a sense of security on the page. Writing helps her understand herself and the world better. In her work, Tiana aims to stir empathy with complex characters that remind us we are more alike than different, and therefore encourage social change. She believes art is a great instrument to not only provoke us to do better, but also to invite us to find joy and spread it. When Tiana isn’t musing over the perfect word pairing, she can be found somewhere cackling at her own jokes…then writing it down – lol.