Winter Miller is an award-winning playwright, 2016 NYFA grant recipient and founding member of the Obie-recognized collective 13 Playwrights. She is best known for her drama IN DARFUR which premiered at The Public Theater, followed by a standing room only performance at their 1800-seat Delacorte Theater in Central Park, a first for a play by a woman. IN DARFUR won the “Two-Headed Challenge” commission from the Guthrie and the Playwrights Center and has been produced nationally. She traveled with her former boss, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to the Sudan border to research on the ground.
Currently, her short play Colored, commissioned by The New Black Fest for Facing OUR TRUTH: 10 MINUTE PLAYS ON TRAYVON, RACE AND PRIVILEGE tours regional theaters. Other plays include: SPARE RIB, NO ONE IS FORGOTTEN, LOOK AT US, THE PENETRATION PLAY, SEED, THE ARRIVAL, and THE MUSICAL AMANDINEAND a collection of short and very short plays. She created and produced Rape Aid at The New Ohio, a variety show about not-raping.
Recent fellowships and residencies include: Civilians R&D group 2014-15, Lark 2012-16, Playwrights Center Core Writer 2011-14, Blue Mountain Center, Space on Ryder Farm, Sundance Institute, Hedgebrook and the Cherry Lane Mentor Project. She is an affiliated artist with New Georges. Commissions include: New Black Fest, Joe’s Pub, CenterStage America, The Gun Control Action Project, Keen Company and Theatre Askew. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and graduated cum laude from Smith College.
Ms. Miller’s plays were produced by The Public, 13P, Cherry Lane, New Black Fest, Joe’s Pub, CenterStage, Goodman, TimeLine, Theater J, Keen, WAM, Geva and Horizon. Her plays have been performed in London and Uganda and are published by Samuel French, Playscripts, No Passport, Smith & Kraus’ Best Stage Scenes, Best Monologues, and others. Ms. Miller’s monologue Mother to Son, is published in Eve Ensler’s anthology A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer and in Best Women’s Monologues of The Millennium.
A playwriting instructor, Ms. Miller has taught at The New School, Primary Stages ESPA, SUNY Purchase, and has led workshops for Princeton, Girl Be Heard, Sundance, NYTW’s “Mind the Gap,” Stella Adler Outreach, Theatre Askew, Keen Teens, Arts Connection and with youth in refugee camps in Northern Uganda and Palestine. Ms. Miller is also Certified Core Energetics Facilitator. She leads frequent workshops in NYC, The Weekend Warrior Writing Intensive where writers of diverse experience and backgrounds immerse and emerge with a brave new work. The group Voices of Uganda invited Ms. Miller to northern Uganda to write short plays for a group of youth living in a refugee camp whose lives were devastated by the LRA and AIDS. The work is chronicled in the 2013 documentary After Kony: Staging Hope. Her monologue Lifelines, is performed by Ruby Dee.
Ms. Miller has written for the Metro and Arts sections of The New York Times and as a regular contributor to the Music and Style sections. She has written articles for New York Magazine, The Boston Globe, The Brooklyn Rail and Variety. She has been profiled in The New Yorker, Bomb, New York Magazine, NPR’s Brian Lehrer Show and MPR.
