Tina Howe
Award-winning playwright Tina Howe served as the head of Hunter’s MFA in Playwriting program from 2010 until 2015. An esteemed educator as well as a formidable playwright, Howe was a beloved member of the artistic community to which she belonged, and well-known to have infused her art into the everyday. Most recognized for her Tony-nominated play Coastal Disturbances, Howe wrote 14 full-length plays, including two Pulitzer prize finalists, Pride’s Crossing and Painting Churches.
Lindsey Ferrentino
In-demand playwright and screenwriter Lindsey Ferrentino graduated from Hunter College with an MFA in Playwriting in 2013. Her plays include Ugly Lies the Bone (Roundabout Theatre Company and The National Theatre, UK), the barrier breaking Amy and the Orphans (Roundabout Theatre Company), This Flat Earth (Playwrights Horizons), and The Year to Come (La Jolla Playhouse).
Charly Evon Simpson
Hunter College Playwriting MFA alumna Charly Evon Simpson is a playwright, educator, and TV writer based in Brooklyn. Her plays include Behind the Sheet, Jump, form of a girl unknown, and it’s not a trip it’s a journey. In TV, Simpson has worked as a writer on Showtime's American Rust and currently has an overall deal at HBO, where she has been a consulting producer on the second season of Industry, and a writer for several other limited series.
Hanna Novak
Hanna Novak is a New York City-based playwright, director, and theater producer. She is a 2018 graduate from the MFA Playwriting program at Hunter College, where she studied with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Annie Baker.
Mara Vélez Meléndez
Mara Vélez Meléndez is a playwright born and raised in Puerto Rico. She earned her MFA in Playwriting at Hunter College in 2019, where she began to develop her play Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, which made its Off Broadway debut in 2022 at the Soho Rep.
John J. Caswell Jr.
Originally from Phoenix, Arizona, John J. Caswell Jr. graduated with an MFA in Playwriting from Hunter College in 2020. He went on to attend The Juilliard School as a fellow at Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwright Program.
Liz Appel
New York-based playwright Liz Appel graduated from Hunter’s MFA program in Playwriting in 2021, where she was awarded a Roberts Foundation Fellowship. Originally from Toronto, Appel also holds an MA and an MPhil from Yale University. Upon finishing her degree, Appel described her experience at Hunter College as “a decade’s worth of learning in two years—I’m exhausted, but thrilled.”
Jamie Rubenstein
Jamie Rubenstein is a New York-based playwright whose works often include roles for different generations of women, and treats mortality, grief, and loneliness with humor and lightness. Prior to entering the MFA in playwriting program at Hunter College, Rubenstein taught English to middle and high school students in public and private schools for over a decade.
Garrett Zuercher
Actor, playwright, and filmmaker Garrett Zuercher earned his MFA in Playwriting at Hunter College in 2022. He identifies as a profoundly Deaf artist and a member of the LGBTQ community. “As a profoundly Deaf artist, it’s always a challenge to try and find the rare spaces where I feel like I fit in,” Zuercher said.