“Wallace has a luxuriously poetic turn of mind and a gift for locating the heart of people on the brink of epiphany or despair”
Naomi Wallace is a playwright and screenwriter from Kentucky who lives in North Yorkshire, U.K. Her plays, which won a MacArthur “genius” prize and Obie award, have been produced in the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States and the Middle East include In the Heart of America, Slaughter City, One Flea Spare, The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, Things of Dry Hours, The Fever Chart: Three Vision of the Middle East, And I and Silence, The Hard Weather Boating Party, The Liquid Plain. Her stage adaptation of William Wharton’s novel Birdy was produced on the West End in London.
One Flea Spare has been incorporated in the permanent repertoire of the French National Theater, the Comédie- Francaise. Only two American playwrights have been added to La Comédie’s repertoire in 300 years. Films: Lawn Dogs, The War Boys, Flying Blind (co-written with Bruce McLeod). Awards: Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (twice), Joseph Kesselring Prize, Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, a Horton Foote Award and a National Endowment for the Arts grant.
Wallace has received an Arts and Letters Award in Literature and the inaugural Windham Campbell prize for drama. Wallace's libretto, The Trials of Patricia Isasa, won the Opus Wards for "Concert of the Year, in Modern and Contemporary Music" from the Quebec Arts Council.
Signature Theater produced three of Wallace’s plays in 2014-2015, including the world premiere of Night is a Room.
Wallace is presently under commission by Headlong Theater Company, UK and Actor's Theater of Louisville.
Wallace is writing the book for the new John Mellencamp musical, Jack and Diane.
