American playwright Laura Marks is a graduate of Juilliard's Acheson Wallace playwriting programme, whose play Bethany was published in Methuen Drama's American Next Wave anthology. It was the runner-up for Yale's David C. Horn Prize, adjudicated by John Guare, and won the Leah Ryan Prize for Emerging Women Writers. Other plays include Mine and Gather at the River.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is a Brooklyn-based playwright, dramaturg, and performer. His work has been seen at The Public Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, PS122, Soho Rep, New Dramatists, The Matrix Theatre, Theater Bielefeld in Bielefeld, Germany and the National Theatre in London and he is working on commissions from Lincoln Center Theater/LCT3 and Yale Repertory Theater. Branden is developing an adaptation of The Octoroon by Dion Boucicault, directed by Mark Ravenhill with Soho Rep. Theater/NYC. He is a former New York Theatre Workshop Playwriting fellow, an alumnus of the Soho Rep Writers/Directors Lab and Public Theater Emerging Writers Group, and a member of the Ars Nova Playgroup. His honours include a Princess Grace Award 2010, the Dorothy Strelsin Playwriting Fellowship 2010, a fellowship in playwriting from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Paula Vogel Award for Playwriting 2011. He also holds an M.A. in Performance Studies from NYU. A recipient of the Princess Grace Award 2009 as well as a Fullbright Fellowship, Branden was also awarded the Paula Vogel Award 2011 and Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting 2011.