Erin Courtney is an award winning, New York based playwright. Her play, A Map of Virtue, produced by 13P and directed by Ken Rus Schmoll, was awarded an Obie and described as "one of the most terrifying plays of the past decade” by Alexis Soloski in The New York Times. A Map of Virtue was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding New York Theater, and has had numerous productions across the country. Her play I Will Be Gone, directed by Kip Fagan, premiered at the Humana Festival, Actors Theater of Louisville in 2015. She is currently writing a new play, Ann, Fran, Mary Ann, which is a Playwrights Horizons commission.
She has written two operas with Elizabeth Swados: The Nomad and Kaspar Hauser. Both were commissioned and produced by The Flea Theater. The musical, The Tattooed Lady, which she is writing with composer and lyricist, Max Vernon, has been developed with support from The Rhinebeck Writer’s Retreat, The Kimmel Center, and Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater. Her other plays, produced by Clubbed Thumb, include Alice The Magnet, directed by Pam MacKinnon, and Demon Baby, directed by Ken Rus Schmoll. She is an affiliated artist with Clubbed Thumb, a member of the Obie Award winning playwright's collective, 13P, as well as the co-founder of the Brooklyn Writers Space. Ms. Courtney was the program director and taught playwriting at the MFA program at Brooklyn. She earned her MFA in playwriting at Brooklyn College under the tutelage of Mac Wellman, and she earned her BA from Brown University where she studied with Paula Vogel. She has been a member of New Dramatists since 2012, a MacDowell Colony Fellow, a Core Writer at the Playwrights’ Center, and a member of The Working Farm at Space on Ryder Farm. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013. Ms. Courtney is core faculty in the MFA Program of Dramatic Writing at Northwestern University in the Radio/Television/Film department.
She has written two operas with Elizabeth Swados: The Nomad and Kaspar Hauser. Both were commissioned and produced by The Flea Theater. The musical, The Tattooed Lady, which she is writing with composer and lyricist, Max Vernon, has been developed with support from The Rhinebeck Writer’s Retreat, The Kimmel Center, and Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater. Her other plays, produced by Clubbed Thumb, include Alice The Magnet, directed by Pam MacKinnon, and Demon Baby, directed by Ken Rus Schmoll. She is an affiliated artist with Clubbed Thumb, a member of the Obie Award winning playwright's collective, 13P, as well as the co-founder of the Brooklyn Writers Space. Ms. Courtney was the program director and taught playwriting at the MFA program at Brooklyn. She earned her MFA in playwriting at Brooklyn College under the tutelage of Mac Wellman, and she earned her BA from Brown University where she studied with Paula Vogel. She has been a member of New Dramatists since 2012, a MacDowell Colony Fellow, a Core Writer at the Playwrights’ Center, and a member of The Working Farm at Space on Ryder Farm. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013. Ms. Courtney is core faculty in the MFA Program of Dramatic Writing at Northwestern University in the Radio/Television/Film department.
"A bird's-eye view of both romance and horror."
–Jason Zinoman on A Map of Virtue, The New York Times
–Jason Zinoman on A Map of Virtue, The New York Times