MONICA BAUER is an award-winning playwright and novelist. A graduate of Brown and Yale, she also has an MA in Creative Writing from Boston University. She is best known as a playwright but began writing novels and short stories during the pandemic when theater came to a halt. Her novel “The Snare” was awarded first prize for a new novel by the Arizona Authors Association, and an excerpt was published in the 2022 Arizona Authors Association Literary Magazine. “Dead Birds” won second place for short story the same year, and was also published in the Arizona Authors Association Literary Magazine, and was nominated for the 2022 Pushcart Prize.  She attended the Kauai Writer’s Conference, where she participated in a writing workshop with one of her favorite writers, Richard Russo. Her novel, “The Book of Brad” received strong reviews from Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, and Indie Reader, and is available on Amazon. 

 

She attended the Sewanee Writer’s Conference where she studied playwriting with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Beth Henley. Her full-length plays have been produced Off-Broadway at Urban Stages, Theater for the New City, the New York Musical Theater Festival, the United Solo Theater Festival, and 59e59 Theaters. Her work has been produced in many local and regional theaters in the US, including New Jersey Repertory Theater, Detroit Repertory Theater, Boston Playwrights’ Theater, the Anacostia Playhouse, Emerson Theater Collaborative, and the Invisible Theater. Her plays have had readings at many theaters, including the John Drew Theater in Southampton, New York; the Blank Theater in Los Angeles; and the Bridge Initiative incubator for new plays in Phoenix, Arizona. She’s made her mark in the UK with three productions at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and took second place in the New South Playwriting Prize for a play at the Brighton Fringe. Her short play, “No Irish Need Apply,” was performed at the Kennedy Center as a winner of “Tiny Plays for Ireland and America.” Her full length hit at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe, “Vivian’s Music, 1969,” has had productions Off Broadway, in Washington DC, New London, Connecticut, Sedona, Arizona, and Tucson, Arizona. It is published by Original Works.

 

Awards include the Emerging Playwright Award from Urban Stages, second place in the national competition New Works for Young Women, best new play at the Midtown International Theater Festival, best comedy at the Planet Connections Theater Festivity off-off Broadway, and Pick of the Fringe at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. She was a finalist for the Heideman Award from Actor’s Theater of Louisville for her short play, “Answering,” published by Heuer. Other publications include “Vivian’s Music, 1969” (Original Works Publishing) “Three Men With Guns” in “The Best New Ten Minute Plays of 2021” from Applause Books, and a monologue included in “The Best New Stage Monologues for Men, 2022”, published by Smith and Kraus.