Tina Howe

Tina Howe (1937-2023) was a prolific and influential American playwright. Her most produced plays include Birth and After Birth, Museum, The Art of Dining, Painting Churches, Coastal Disturbances, Approaching Zanzibar and Pride’s Crossing. These and other works premiered at the Public Theater, the Kennedy Center, Second Stage, The Old Globe Theatre, Lincoln Center Theater, the Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Atlantic Theater Company and Primary Stages, as well as being translated and produced abroad.

Among her many awards were an Obie for Distinguished Playwriting, a Tony Award nomination for Best Play, an Outer Circle Critics Award, a Rockefeller Grant, two N.E.A. Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, the Sidney Kingsley Award, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, two honorary degrees, the William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in the American Theatre, a Lilly Award for Lifetime Achievement and, most recently, PEN’s Master American Playwright award in 2015.

A two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Ms. Howe taught at NYU, Columbia, Carnegie Mellon and UCLA before becoming Visiting Professor at Hunter College in 1990, then going on to launch the Rita and Burton Goldberg MFA in Playwriting in 2010 as Playwright-in-Residence.

Her works can be read in numerous anthologies as well as in Coastal Disturbances: Four Plays by Tina Howe and Birth and After Birth and Other Plays: A Marriage Cycle, published by Theatre Communications Group. Her other publications include her translations of Ionesco's The Bald Soprano and The Lesson (Grove Press) and Shrinking Violets and Towering Tiger Lilies: Seven Brief Plays about Women in Distress (Samuel French). She is also the subject of Howe in an Hour, edited by Judith Barlow, published by Smith and Kraus. Ms. Howe was proud to have served on the council of the Dramatists Guild from 1990 to 2023.