Aleshea Harris

Aleshea Harris is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter and director. Her mother served in the U.S. Army, and Harris spent much of her childhood moving around the South. Harris earned a B.A. in theater from the University of Southern Mississippi and an M.F.A. in writing for performance from the California Institute of the Arts. Driven by a desire to see Black women’s experiences represented onstage, she founded Bag of Beans Productions and co-founded Blue Scarf Collective, bringing together organizations dedicated to uplifting Black narratives through theater.

Harris first rose to acclaim with her fierce and kinetic play "Is God Is," a surreal, genre-blending revenge odyssey that mixes Greek tragedy, hip-hop, Afropunk and spaghetti-western energy. That work earned the Relentless Award in 2016, an Obie Award in 2017, and a film version adapted and directed by Harris is slated for wide release in 2026. Her 2018 piece "What to Send Up When It Goes Down" embraced ritual, audience participation and spoken word to create a communal grieving and healing space from anti-Black violence. In 2022, Harris premiered "On Sugarland," a sweeping, lyrical drama loosely based on ancient Greek tragedies, at New York Theatre Workshop. The play was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Harris’ work has been recognized with many honors, including the Windham-Campbell Literary Prize, the Hermitage Greenfield Prize, the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award and numerous fellowships including being a two-time MacDowell fellow. Harris is based in Los Angeles, writing and developing new work that challenges theatrical norms and demonstrates a belief in the expansiveness of Black stories.