FRANCE-LUCE BENSON. As a playwright and arts educator, France-Luce Benson was named “Someone to Watch” in 2019 by American Theatre magazine, and her play Talking Peace topped the list of most impactful plays in the Together L.A.: ATLA Virtual Theatre Festival. Tigress of San Domingue, the second in her trilogy about the Haitian Revolution, was named a finalist of the Bay Area Playwrights Festival 2020, and was selected for The Playwrights Center’s Afro Atlantic Playwrights Festival. She is a recipient of a Miranda Family Foundation grant for her play Detained, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation New Play Commission for her play The Devil’s Salt, and a Princess Grace Award runner up for Boat People. Additional honors include: Zoetrope Grand Prize for her screenplay Caroline’s Wedding; Dramatists Guild Fellow 2016-17, Sam French OOB Festival Winner, NNPN Award for Risen from the Dough, and three-time Kilroy List Honorable Mention. Residencies include Djerassi, the Camargo Foundation in France, and Instituto Sacatar in Bahia, Brazil. Her plays have had productions, workshops, and readings at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Crossroads Theatre New Jersey, City Theatre of Miami, The Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, Loyola Marymount University, Global Black Voices in London, and in New York: New Black Fest at The Lark, The Billy Holiday Theatre, and the Ensemble Studio Theatre New York, where she is a company member. She’s been published by Sam French and Routledge Press. After graduating from FIU, she went on to earn an MFA in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon University. Teaching appointments have included UCLA Extension, St. Johns University, and Columbia University. She is currently based on Los Angeles, California where she serves as the Community Engagement Coordinator at The Fountain Theatre.
