Thornton Wilder was born in Madison, Wisconsin, on April 17, 1897. He graduated from Berkley High School in 1915 and received his Bachelor of Arts at Yale University in 1920. Following graduation, Wilder studied archaeology and Italian at the American Academy in Rome from 1920-1921, then obtained a Master’s degree in French from Princeton in 1926. Following his extensive education, Wilder read and spoke English, German, French, and Spanish, and would translate plays by famous playwrights such as Henrik Ibsen and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Soon after he graduated, Wilder began teaching courses such as French, Classics in Translation and Composition, Poetry, and more throughout the Northeast United States. It was during this time that Thornton Wilder published his first novel, The Cabala. In 1927, he won his first Pulitzer Prize for The Bridge of San Luis Rey. He would go on to be awarded his second for Our Town in 1938. Wilder served in the Army Air Force Intelligence during WWII and was awarded the Legion of Merit Bronze Star, the Legion d’honneur, and the Order of the British Empire.

Even after his time in the military, Wilder wrote several award-winning plays and novels including Eighth Day which won the National Book Award. By the end of his career, Wilder had written seven books, three plays, and countless essays, one-act plays, and articles. Wilder died from heart failure on December 7, 1975 at the age of 78, but his memory is honored through the Thornton Wilder Foundation.

Cuban-American playwright Nilo Cruz gained national prominence in 2003 when he won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for his play Anna in the Tropics, for which he also received a Tony Award nomination. The immigrant experience is a common theme in many of Cruz's plays and he has become known for his ability to successfully weave strains of magic realism and other literary traditions into his works.

In addition to the Pulitzer, he has received numerous awards, including those from the Kennedy Center Fund, American Theatre Critics and the Humana Festival for New American Plays, as well as grants from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others.

Cruz, who received an M.F.A. from Brown University and an honorary doctorate degree from Whittier College, has twice previously served as a playwright-in-residence: in 2000 for the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, N.J., and in 2001 for the New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, which commissioned Anna in the Tropics. Cruz has also taught drama at Yale, Brown and the University of Iowa. During the 2019/20 academic year, he was the Hearst Theater Lab Initiative Distinguished Visiting Playwright-in-Residence at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. He is a member of the New Dramatists.

Jeff Augustin is a Miami-born playwright. His plays include Where the Mountain Meets the Sea (Humana Festival of New American Plays); The New Englanders (Manhattan Theatre Club); Little Children Dream of God (Roundabout Theatre Company); The Last Tiger in Haiti (La Jolla Playhouse and Berkeley Rep) and Cry Old Kingdom (Humana Festival). He translated Our Town into Haitian Creole for Miami New Drama’s multilingual production. Jeff was the Shank Playwright-in-Residence at Playwrights Horizons and the inaugural Tow Foundation Playwright-in-Residence at Roundabout. He is an alumni of the New York Theatre Workshop 2050 Fellowship; Rita Goldberg Playwright’s Workshop at the Lark; and The Working Farm at SPACE on Ryder Farm. Jeff is currently under commission from Manhattan Theatre Club and La Jolla Playhouse. TV Credits: Claws (TNT); The Morning Show (Apple) and The Good Lord Bird (Showtime). Current projects in development with Fox Searchlight; Netflix; and Element Pictures. BA: Boston College, MFA: UC San Diego.