B.J. Burton is the author of several full-length plays including Lobelia Lodge, Room For Love, Hunting Season, For The Record and The Dangers of Lightning (currently in progress). Her plays have been produced and/or developed at InterAct Theatre Company, Hedgerow Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Source, Pittsburgh New Works Festival at City Theatre, The Brick Playhouse, and Widener University, among others. Honors include two fellowships from Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a finalist designation for the Heideman Award at Actors Theatre of Louisville and a semifinalist in the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. Before discovering her passion for writing, she worked as an actor for over 20 years. She received her B.A. in Theatre from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and continued with post-graduate work at American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and Villanova University. She received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Rosemont College, where she currently teaches. Memberships include AEA, SAG and The Dramatists Guild.

A Sky Full Of Stars
As Mary struggles to write a romance novel she gets some unusual help from her characters and her next-door neighbor.

Pam Calabrese MacLean lives in Antigonish, Nova Scotia where she works in the Library of St. Francis Xavier University. She is a Mother, a Nonna, a playwright, and a poet.

MacLean’s first play, Her Father’s Barn garnered awards at The London Fringe Festival (2005), Liverpool International Theatre Festival (2006), and The Uno Festival in Victoria, BC (2007).

 

Her second play, Sunnyside Café received rave reviews at this year’s Atlantic Fringe Festival.

 

Her award winning poems have appeared in literary journals in Canada, the US and Great Britain. Twenty-four Names for Mother (Paper Journey Press 2006) was her first book of poetry.

Her flash fiction has appeared in two US anthologies: Women Behaving Badly, 2004 and Blink, 2006.

 

In 2006 Calabrese MacLean co-edited Flavours of Varmland for the Varmland Museum in Sweden.

 

Her second book of poetry, The Dead Can’t Dance, was published by Ronsdale Press in the fall of 2009.

Is It Wednesday

Two elderly women make a surprising discovery while chatting at the bus stop.

M.E.H. Lewis is an internationally produced, award-winning playwright and writing teacher. She is a two-time Illinois Arts Council Fellow, a five-time semi-finalist for the O'Neill Playwright's Conference, winner of the Joseph Jefferson Award for Excellence in Theatre, the Julie Harris Playwriting Prize, and the Dayton Playhouse Outstanding Playwright Award, as well as a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists and a member of the Dramatists Guild. She is currently writing a play about women veterans and would be honored to speak confidentially with any women who wish to share their experiences. You may contact her at meh.lewis@gmail.com.


How To Make A Sweet Potato Pie
June, a war vet, tries to readjust to civilian life while making a sweet potato pie with her mother-in-law.

Catherine Noah is city editor of two daily newspapers in Southern Oregon, the Mail Tribune and the Ashland Daily Tidings. She's been writing short plays since 2002 (with the help of a brutally honest but infinitely supportive playwriting group) and has had numerous staged readings and several productions, including with Ashland Contemporary Theatre, North Hollywood's Visceral Company, and Lord Leebrick Theatre's Northwest Ten Festival in Eugene. "Glutton for Punishment" was read as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Midnight Projects last year. She's very excited to be part of the 6 Women Playwriting Festival and wants to thank cast and crew for all their hard work in making it a success.

Glutton For Punishment
A woman must defend her karmic record to Satan, a beleaguered bureaucrat who tows the company line that the Catholics were right all along.

Tira Palmquist is a writer, director and teacher. Her full-length scripts include Fortune and Pain at the Edge of the World, The Frequency of Stars and Other Matter, Coyote Rising, Lost Nation and Age of Bees.

 

Fortune and Pain, her newest play, was recently featured in the Mad Scene Reading Series in Los Angeles in January 2011, as well as being included in the Company of Angels’ January 2011 Playwrights’ Intensive. In February 2011, Breath of Fire Latina Theatre Ensemble presented of staged reading of The Frequency of Stars and Other Matter (PlayLab, 2010 Great Plains Theatre Conference; 2010 Semi-Finalist - PlayPenn play development conference; 2010 finalist Seven Devils conference).

 

Other honors: Lost Nation, finalist - 2007 John Gassner New Play Festival, semi-finalist, 2007 Coe College Playwriting Festival; Age of Bees, Winner 2009 Company of Angels’ Visions of Dystopia Play Festival; Breathing Water Instead of Air (one act), 2nd place, Stage Door Productions’ Third Annual One-Act Festival, Winner SipFest International Play Competition.   

 

Her short plays have been produced across the country, and include Breathing Water Instead of Air (Stage Door Productions, DeLand Theatre Festival, Total Theatre), Flood Stage (n.u.f.a.n. ensemble's Table and Chairs 2008) Last Rites (n.u.f.a.n. ensemble's Table and Chairs 2009, Short+Sweet Sydney 2011), Independence Day and Someone to Watch Over Me (Hunger Artists Theatre), Table for Three and 4th and Main (Company of Angel's L.A. Views II and ),  Off to Summer (10 x 10 in the Triangle), Community/Property (Theatricum Botanicum, Back Yard Fruit).

 

Tira teaches writing at the University of California, Irvine and at the Orange County High School of the Arts, and is a member of the Dramatists Guild.

Off To Summer
Despite her father's protests, Debra finds a way to make his necessary introduction to a retirement home palatable.

Nicole Pandolfo is an actress and playwright who has had plays produced on four continents and in several states, as well as all over New York City.

Nicole has had the great fortune of studying under Craig Lucas, Gretchen Cryer, Austin Pendleton, Frank Wood, Robert McKee, Donna de Matteo, and Julie McKee.

She is from New Jersey and does not understand anti-Jersey sentiments. She thinks meeting Cher would be the tops.

She thanks her mother, Adele, and family and friends for their love and support.

 

She would especially like to thank everyone at the 6 Women Playwriting Festival.

I Thought I Liked Girls

Lucy confesses to her parents that, after a lifetime as a lesbian, she's discovered she's straight.