Velina Hasu Houston

VELINA HASU HOUSTON is an internationally celebrated writer with over twenty commissions in theatre and opera. Houston founded graduate playwriting studies at the School of Dramatic Arts, University of Southern California, where she is Distinguished Professor of Dramatic Writing, Resident Playwright, Director of Dramatic Writing, and Associate Dean of Faculty. Her work has been produced nationwide and globally to critical acclaim at prestigious institutions, notably the Manhattan Theatre Club, Los Angeles Opera, The Pasadena Playhouse, and the Old Globe Theatre. Her play Tea, written in the 1980s, has been produced regularly to present day. Honored by the Kennedy Center, Smithsonian Institute, Rockefeller Foundation, Japan Foundation, Wallace Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and others,

A published poet and essayist Houston is the author of the award-winning collection of her plays, Green Tea Girl in Orange Pekoe Country (2014) Her publications are with Dramatists Play Service, Smith and Kraus, Vintage Books/Random House, Akashi Shoten (Tokyo), Temple University Press, Dramatic Publishing, University of Massachusetts Press, University of Texas Press, Murasaki Books, Alexander Street Press, Applause Books, Routledge, and others. She has written for the Los Angeles Times, American Theatre, The Rafu Shimpo, Pacific Citizen, The Dramatist, and the Kansas City Star.  For film and television, she has written for Columbia Pictures, PBS, and several independent producers.

A Fulbright scholar, she served on the U.S. Department of State’s Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission for six years, and writes critically about representations of mixed race in cinema and theatre.  http://www.velinahasuhouston.com.

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