Meet the 2016-17 Jerome Fellows

Please help us welcome the 2016-17 Jerome Fellows: Katie Bender, Emily Feldman, Jessica Huang, and Kristin Idaszak.

Jerome Fellows receive $18,000 (an increase of $2,000 this year) and $1,725 in play development funds. They spend a year-long residency in Minnesota. Past recipients of the Jerome Fellowship include Lee Blessing, Lisa D’Amour, Kristoffer Diaz, Naomi Iizuka, Melanie Marnich, Martín Zimmerman, and August Wilson. The Playwrights’ Center’s 2016-17 Jerome Fellows are:

• Katie Bender, a University of Texas at Austin M.F.A. graduate whose work includes this season’s world premiere of her immersive adaptation of Alice in Wonderland (ZACH Theatre) and who is a founding member of Underbelly theater collaborative
• Emily Feldman, a former Playwrights’ Center Core Apprentice and recent University of California, San Diego M.F.A. graduate whose plays include Three Women in Four Chairs
• Jessica Huang, a Twin Cities-based playwright and former Many Voices Fellow whose play Purple Cloud premiered with Mu Performing Arts in December 2015
• Kristin Idaszak, a current Jerome Fellow whose play Second Skin received the Kennedy Center’s Paula Vogel Playwriting Award and the Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award, and who holds an M.F.A. from University of California, San Diego

(See also: 2016-17 Many Voices Fellows and Mentees announcement)

KATIE BENDER

Katie Bender is a playwright, performer, and teacher. Her plays include Still Now, The Fault, One Night Only, and an immersive adaption of Alice in Wonderland that she co­-created with Underbelly. Her work has been developed with The New Harmony Project, Kitchen Dog, The Orchard Project, Shrewd Productions, and ZACH Theatre. She is a co-­creator of Underbelly, with whom she’s been a guest artist at New Victory Theatre. Nominated for The Kilroys List and a finalist for the inaugural Shakespeare’s Sister Fellowship, she has her B.F.A. from New York University and her M.F.A. from The University of Texas.

EMILY FELDMAN

Emily Feldman’s plays include Three Women in Four Chairs, The Mango Farmer of Vermont, and Go. Please. Go. Her work has been developed or presented by the Playwrights’ Center, Colt Coeur and Actors Theatre of Louisville. She’s been an artist-in-residence at SPACE on Ryder Farm and The Atlantic Center for the Arts, a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers conference and a Core Apprentice at the Playwrights’ Center. She recently completed her M.F.A. in playwriting at the University of California, San Diego. B.A.: Middlebury College.

JESSICA HUANG

Jessica Huang is a Twin Cities-based playwright, recipient of the 2014 Metropolitan Regional Arts Council’s Next Step Grant and a 2012 Many Voices Fellowship, and co-founder of Other Tiger Productions. Her plays have been developed and/or produced in the Twin Cities at Mu Performing Arts, History Theatre, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, and Pillsbury House Theatre; nationally at A-Squared Theatre Workshop (Chicago), 2nd Generation (NYC), the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts (D.C.), and the Source Festival (D.C.); and internationally at Yellow Earth's Typhoon Festival (London). In 2014, her play Purple Cloud was nominated to The Kilroys List. www.jessica-huang.com

KRISTIN IDASZAK

Kristin Idaszak is a playwright and theater artist originally from Chicago. Her play Second Skin received the Kennedy Center’s Paula Vogel Playwriting Award and the Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award. She has been nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Work and received an honorable mention on The Kilroys List. She was the 2015 Kennedy Center Fellow at the Sundance Theatre Lab. She has received two Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellowships. Previously, Kristin served as Associate Artistic Director/Literary Manager of Caffeine Theatre and Associate Artistic Director of Collaboraction. M.F.A.: University of California, San Diego. https://kristinidaszak.com/