Lauren is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and short story author. She received her MFA in Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch, her BA from Emory University, is n NYU a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship, and will be the first Playwright in Residence at the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics (2010). Her work has received national praise and awards including the Berrilla Kerr Award for American Theatre, Young Playwright's Award, Eric Bentley New Play Award and Essential Theatre Prize. Her science-history play Emilie: Le Marquise Du ChÃtelet Defends Her Tonight premiered at South Coast Rep April 2009 and is published by Samuel French. Fire Work was developed at The O'Neill National Playwrights Conference Summer 2009.
She has been produced off-Broadway, off-off Broadway, and regionally. She has twice been commissioned by South Coast Rep and The Kennedy Center, and also by The Alliance Theatre's Collision Project, Actors Express Theatre, Dad's Garage Theatre, Theatrical Outfit, City University of New York and Synchronicity Performance Group. She has developed plays with Second Stage and Primary Stages in NYC; South Coast Rep's Pacific Playwrights Festival in Los Angeles; The O'Neill National Playwrights Conference; Marin Theatre Company, Playwrights Foundation and The Magic Theatre in San Francisco; New Rep in Boston; Kitchen Dog Theatre in Dallas; Actor Express and Horizon Theatre in Atlanta; JAW/West in Portland, WORDBridge, Brave New Works, and others. She received a Sloan Science Script Award (2008) for her screenplay Grand Unification. Leap was published with Theatre Emory's Playwriting Center (2004), and her short story, The Ascending Life, won the Norembega Short Fiction Award and was published in the anthology, The Shape of Content; her science play Background was published in ISOTOPE: A Journal of Nature and Science Writing. Her string theory poem "Hook of a Number" was published in the anthology Riffing On Strings. She has spoken nationally and internationally on the intersection of science and theatre and Arts Activism. Read more about her on her website at www.LaurenGunderson.com - @LalaTellsAStory
Lauren is an award-winning writer still in her early career. Based in New York, but hailing from Atlanta, she writes with regard to women, science, history, and social activism.
She was recently voted BEST LOCAL PLAYWRIGHT by Creative Loafing Atlanta.
