Photo by Deborah Lowery
Jennifer O’Grady is an award-winning American playwright and poet. Born and raised in New York City, she earned an MFA in Writing from Columbia University and a BA from Vassar, where she won awards for her writing.
Jennifer’s plays have been produced all around the U.S. and internationally and include Charlotte’s Letters (Rising Artist Award; 1st Place Henley Rose Award; O’Neill Semifinalist and other honors); Paranormal Love (MTWorks Newborn Award; NEWvember Finalist; Panndora’s Box Honorable Mention and other honors); Fertile Ground (2022 Semifinalist for the O’Neill NPC, Prince Grace Award/New Dramatists Fellowship and Panndora’s Box); still small voice (2023 Moxie Incubator Finalist); Sugar (2023 Gary Garrison Award Finalist) and more. Her plays are included in multiple editions of the annual Best Ten-Minute Plays, Best Women’s Stage Monologues and Best New Ten-Minute Plays among other anthologies and publications, and have been presented by The Irish Rep, 6th Street Playhouse, The Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival, Attic Salt Theatre, Brave New World Rep, Little Fish Theatre’s Pick of the Vine, Short + Sweet, The Bechdel Group, NEWvember Festival Dublin, Lakeshore Players Theatre, The Playhouse at White Lake, Rover Dramawerks, Heartland Theatre Company, Gi60 (U.S. and UK), Valley Players, PlayZoomers and many others including schools and colleges throughout the U.S.
She is also the author of the poetry books White, winner of the Mid-List Press First Series Award for Poetry and a Greenwall Award from The Academy of American Poets, and Exclusions & Limitations (Plume Editions/MadHat Press). Her poems are published, reprinted, broadcast and shared in numerous places including Poetry, Harper’s, The Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The Writer’s Almanac, Poetry Daily, Plume, The Yale Review, BBC Radio 4 and American Poetry: The Next Generation (to name just a few) and have garnered awards and Pushcart Prize nominations. “Moths” (included in White) has been widely shared and reprinted and is set to music by composer Robert Paterson. Other poetry honors include a Billee Murray Denny Award and the W.K. Rose Fellowship.
Jennifer has worked in publishing and nonprofit literary arts, first at The Academy of American Poets and later as Program Director of the National Writer’s Voice/YMC National Writer’s Voice. She lives with her family near New York City.