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. Meléndez has said that her two years at Hunter “allowed me the space to experiment with my craft in ways that mined who I was and transformed who I was to become...not only as a playwright, but as a Diasporican in New York. I was acquainted with growing, beautiful artistry by playwrights I now have the honor to call friends.”

In 2023 Meléndez was awarded a MacDowell fellowship, during which she worked on a new play titled Honey, I Fell in Love With the Computer. Mara was a 2020-2021 Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow and a member of Ars Nova's PlayGroup. Her work has also been developed at The Lark, Teatro SEA, Pregones/PRTT, The Latinx Playwrights Circle and Fresh Ground Pepper. Other plays include We Built Our Homes Near Kingdoms of Animals and Magic (The Lark's Playwright's Week, 2019 Rita & Burton Goldberg Playwriting Prize), ¡GARGOLA! (MCC LiveLabs), and Lajasarriba.