R. Eric Thomas is a Barrymore Award-winning playwright and humorist. He is the long-running host of The Moth in Philadelphia. He is a Senior Staff Writer for Elle.com where he writes “Eric Reads the News,” a daily current events and culture column. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Man Repeller, Fusion, Philadelphia Magazine, Newsworks, ThinkingDance, and others. His play, TIME IS ON OUR SIDE, was commissioned by Simpatico Theater Project and developed with PlayPenn and PlayPenn Education. It was the recipient of two 2016 Barrymore Awards, including Best New Play, and was a finalist for the Harold and Mimi Steinberg American Theater Critics Association New Play Award. Forthcoming: MRS. HARRISON (Azuka Theatre, 2018), the Midwest premiere of TIME IS ON OUR SIDE (About Face Theatre, 2018), INFINITY JONES NEEDS SOME SPACE! (development: Act II Theatre), SAFE SPACE (development: Cohesion Theater Company Playwright’s Fellowship). With over a million social media shares, Eric’s ELLE.com column “Eric Reads the News” has quickly become an online humor staple. Covering pop culture, politics and current events, the column is a sardonic and sassy take on our world. Since its inception, it has been praised by such disparate personalities as Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mariah Carey, Maxine Waters, Tamron Hall, and Tituss Burgess. Eric gave a talk at the 2011 TEDxPhilly conference. Since 2014 he has also worked with TED to coach TEDx speakers. He is a alumnus of The Foundry, a Philadelphia playwrights lab, a 2017 Lambda Literary Fellow, and a member of InterAct Theatre Company’s CORE Playwrights program, Baltimore Center Stage’s Playwright’s Collective and the Cohesion Theater Company 2017 Playwright’s Fellowship.

Jacqueline Goldfinger is the Director of Education for PlayPenn and teaches playwriting at the University of Pennsylvania. She won the Yale-Horn Drama Prize for Emerging Playwright, Smith Prize for Political Theater, a Barrymore Award for Outstanding New Play and Philadelphia Critics Award for Best New Play, was nominated for the Weissberger Award and the Blackburn Prize, and received a Commendation from the Terrence McNally Award. Her plays include Babel (NNPN/Florida Studio Theatre Residency),  Bottle Fly (The National Theatre New Work Studio/London, Wilma Theatre‘s HotHouse, PlayPenn New Play Conference), The Arsonists (Kennedy Center Page-to-Stage, La MaMa, National New Play Showcase, Sewanee Writers Conference, Disquiet/Lisbon, Kenyon Playwrights Conference, Perseverance Theatre, Azuka Theatre, Capital Stage, Know Theatre, BenchmarkTheatre, Thrown Stone Theatre), Click (Theatre Exile’s X-hibition Series, Emerson Stage Residency, Drama League Residency), Skin & Bone (Azuka Theatre, Bloomsberg Theatre Ensemble, Orlando Shakespeare PlayFest, Arden Theatre Writer’s Room), Slip/Shot (Seattle Public, FlashpointTheatre, PlayPenn New Play Conference, The Lark’s Playwrights Week), The Oath (Manhattan Theatre Works, Acadiana Rep, Last Frontier Writers Conference), and The Terrible Girls (Azuka Theatre, NYC International Fringe Festival, San Diego Playwrights Collective). Her work is published by Yale Press, Samuel French, Playscripts, and Smith & Kraus. Her work has been supported by New Georges, Yaddo Residency, National Endowment for the Arts, Independence Foundation, The Mitten Lab, People’s Light and Theatre Company’s Harmony Lab, The Producer’s Fund, Passage TheatrePlayLab, National New Play Network, Azuka Theatre Playwright-in-Residence Program, InterAct Playwrights Circle, among others. Read more about her work online: www.jacquelinegoldfinger.com