Naomi Wallace

Naomi Wallace (born 1960) is an American playwright, screenwriter and poet from Kentucky. She is widely known for her plays, and has received several distinguished awards for her work.

Biography

Naomi Wallace was born in Prospect, Kentucky, to Henry F. Wallace, a photojournalist and correspondent for Time and Life magazines, and Sonja de Vries, a Dutch justice and human rights worker.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Wallace obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hampshire College. She then received two master's degrees from the University of Iowa. Currently, she divides her time between Kentucky and the Yorkshire Dales in Northern England (UK), where she lives with her partner, Bruce McLeod.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Wallace has taught English literature, poetry and play writing at Yale University, UCLA, Illinois State University, Merrimack College, American University of Cairo, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and other institutions. In 2024 Wallace lectured at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

She has been called "a dedicated advocate for justice and human rights in the U.S. and abroad, and Palestinian rights in the Middle East,"<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and her writing described as "muscular, devastating, and unwavering".<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref>

Activism

In the mid-2000s, Wallace was briefly detained by the United States Department of Homeland Security after defying the ban on travel to Cuba.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In August 2016, Wallace was one of the Freedom Riders with the Women's Boat to Gaza.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

She has also worked with women in the criminal justice system, and is a member of Showing up for Racial Justice.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Wallace is a member of Jewish Voice for Peace.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Publications

Wallace's plays are published in the U.S. by Broadway Play Publishing Inc., Theatre Communications Group, Faber and Faber in the UK, and éditions Théâtrales in France. Wallace's work has been produced in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, and the Middle East.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=":1">Template:Cite web</ref>

Awards

Wallace's work has received the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize twice, the Joseph Kesselring Prize, the Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, and an Obie Award. She is also a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts development grant.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2009, One Flea Spare was incorporated into the permanent répertoire of the French National Theatre, the Comédie-Française, and produced there in 2012. Only two American playwrights have ever been added to La Comédie's repertoire in 300 years: the other being Tennessee Williams. The play was translated into French by Dominique Hollier.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2012, Wallace was a recipient of the Horton Foote Prize for most promising new American play.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2013, she was awarded the inaugural Windham–Campbell Literature Prize established at Yale University.<ref name=":0" /><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 2015, Wallace received an Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.<ref>Template:Cite webTemplate:Dead link</ref>

In 2025, Wallace was inducted into the Kentucky Writer's Hall of Fame. <ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2025, Troisième Bureau created the annual Naomi Wallace Award in Grenoble, France. <ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Work

Jeremy Scahill and Naomi Wallace giving a writing workshop in New Haven, Connecticut.

Plays

• In The Heart of America
• One Flea Spare
• The Inland Sea<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Slaughter City
• The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• The Girl Who Fell Through a Hole in Her Jumper<ref>Goldsworthy, Sally ed. Young Blood - Plays for Young Performers (1998, Aurora Metro Books)</ref> (with Bruce E. J. McLeod; licensed under the title The Girl Who Fell Through a Hole in Her Sweater in the United States)
• The War Boys<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Things of Dry Hours<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
• Birdy<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> (an adaptation of William Wharton's novel)
• The Fever Chart: Three Visions of the Middle East<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Twenty One Positions: A Cartographic Dream of the Middle East (with Lisa Schlesinger and Abdelfattah Abusrour)
• The Hard Weather Boating Party
• One Short Sleepe
• And I and Silence<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
• The Liquid Plain<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Night is a Room<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Barrel Wave<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• The Return of Benjamin Lay (produced at the Finborough Theatre<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> with Marcus Rediker)
• The Breach
• Returning to Haifa (with Ismail Khalidi (writer))<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Guernica, Gaza (with Ismail Khalidi (writer))<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Anthologies

• Inside/Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Double Exposure: Plays of the Jewish and Palestinian Diasporas<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Essays

• "Trump-ocalypse Now? Theater in the Age of Trump"<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• "Radical Vision and Form"<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> (interview)
• "Let the Right One In: On resistance, hospitality and new writing for the American stage"<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Poetry

• Template:Cite book

Films

• Lawn Dogs<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
• The War Boys, co-written with Bruce E. J. McLeod
• Flying Blind, co-written with Bruce E. J. McLeod<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Other

• "In the Fields of Aceldama" in Best of The Fest, ed. Phil Setren. 1998, Aurora Metro Books.

External links

• Template:Official website
• Naomi Wallace, Broadway Play Publishing Inc Playwright of the Year 1997
• Template:Cite journal
• Template:Cite journal