LAUREN GUNDERSON has been one of the most produced playwrights in America since 2015, topping the list twice including 2019/20. She is a two-time winner of the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award for I And You and The Book of Will, the winner of the Lanford Wilson Award and the Otis Guernsey New Voices Award, a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and John Gassner Award for Playwriting, and a recipient of the Mellon Foundation’s Residency with Marin Theatre Company. She studied Southern Literature and Drama at Emory University, and Dramatic Writing at NYU’s Tisch School where she was a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship. Her newest play The Catastrophist, about her husband virologist Nathan Wolfe, premiered digitally in January 2021. She co-authored the Miss Bennet plays with Margot Melcon, and her audioplay The Half-Life of Marie Curie is available on Audible.com. Her work is published at Playscripts (I And You, Exit Pursued By A Bear, The Taming and Toil and Trouble), Dramatists Play Service (The Revolutionists, The Book of Will, Silent Sky, Bauer, Natural Schocks, The Wickhams and Miss Bennet) and Samuel French (Emilie). Her picture book "Dr. Wonderful: Blast Off to the Moon" is available from Two Lions/Amazon. She is currently developing musicals with Ari Afsar, Dave Stewart and Joss Stone, and Kait Kerrigan and Bree Lowdermilk.
www.LaurenGunderson.com

MARGOT MELCON is a theater artist, administrator, and writer. She was the Director of New Play Development at Marin Theatre Company for seven years, where she dramaturged over 30 productions—including six world premieres—and administered the company’s two annual new play prizes and commissioning program. She has developed plays with TheatreWorks, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Crowded Fire Theater, Shotgun Players, Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor, the Kennedy Center, the New Harmony Project, and the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis. She is currently the Program Executive for Promoting Culture at the Zellerbach Family Foundation. Margot is a graduate of California State University, Chico.

A sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice set two years after the novel ends, Miss Bennet continuous the story, only this time with bookish middle-sister Mary as its unlikely heroine. Mary is growing tired of her role as dutiful middle sister in the face of her siblings’ romantic escapades. When the family gathers for Christmas at Pemberley, an unexpected guest sparks Mary’s hopes for independence, an intellectual match, and possibly even love. “…an unstuffy, highly entertaining and warm-spirited work, the kind of thing multiple generations can enjoy together.” -Chicago Tribune; “…a perfectly constructed love story… Given its fizzy comedy, sweet spirit and clean structure, (Miss Bennet) seems destined to populate future holiday seasons…” -San Francisco Chronicle