Jesús I. Valles

Playwriting

Jesús I. Valles (they/them) is a queer Mexican immigrant, educator, writer-performer from Cd. Juarez/El Paso. Valles is the winner of a 2023 Princess Grace Award in Theater, the 2023 Yale Drama Series, selected by Jeremy O. Harris (Bathhouse.pptx), the 2022 Kernodle Playwriting Prize (a river, its mouths), and was named the 2022 Emerging Theatre Professional by the National Theatre Conference. As a playwright, Valles has been produced by the Latino Theatre Co. in Los Angeles ((Un)Documents), ZACH Theatre (Una Noche Buena), and The Flea (Bathhouse.pptx), and has received development support from The Bushwick Starr, Clubbed Thumb, The Flea, The Kennedy Center, The Lortel, Manhattan Theatre Club, OUTsider Festival, The Playwrights’ Center, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Teatro Vivo, and The VORTEX. As a poet, Valles received fellowships from CantoMundo, Community of Writers, Idyllwild Arts, Lambda Literary, Tin House, and Undocupoets. Valles was a Core Apprentice of the Playwrights’ Center, a writing fellow with The Playwrights Realm, and is currently a member of New Dramatists class of 2031. They received their MFA in writing for performance from Brown University. Here, Valles wishes to echo Rasha Abdulhadi's call to you, dear reader, to refuse and resist the genocide of Palestinian people. Wherever you are, whatever sand you can throw on the gears of genocide, do it now. The elimination of the Palestinian people is not inevitable. We can refuse with our every breath and action. We must." In memory of every writer and artist martyred in Gaza, in memory of our theater colleagues, Inas al-Saqa and Nour al-Din Hajjaj, in solidarity with the Freedom Theatre in Jenin, in longing for a free Palestine, I wish to remind us our liberation is bound up together.

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