Playwright

a.k.
payne

(she/they)

a.k. payne is a playwright and theatermaker with roots in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Their plays love on and engage Black lives and languages beyond the confines of linear time to find/remember stories that might create conditions for our collective liberation(s). They hold a B.A. in English and African-American Studies from Yale College and an M.F.A. in Playwriting under Tarell Alvin McCraney from fka Yale School of Drama. Their work has been finalist for the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award and a two-time finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She is the current recipient of the Van Lier New Voices Fellowship, National Black Theatre’s I AM SOUL Playwrights Residency, the Kemp Powers Commission Fund for Black Playwrights, and Atlantic Theater Company's Judith Champion Launch Commission. They are a grandchild of the Great Migration; a queer and non-binary abolitionist affected in community by the “New Jim Crow;” and of a great lineage of Black women storytellers and living-room archivists; all of which deeply informs, uplifts, and amplifies their work as a playwright, community organizer, and spacemaker.