Banna Desta (Playwright, Short Plays) (she/they) is an Eritrean and Ethiopian-American writer for the screen and stage who crafts stories about and for the African diaspora. She is the author of The Abyssinians (Audible); Midnight in Abyssinia (La MaMa’s CultureHub and The Africa Center); Red Taxi; Bygone Fruit which premiered at the 2024 Women in Theater Festival; and Pining which premiered at Rattlestick Theater and was published in Samuel French in 2019. Her work for the stage has been supported and workshopped by Atlantic Theater Company, National Black Theatre, The New Group, and the Dramatists Guild Foundation. She has held residencies at SPACE on Ryder Farm, Art Omi, Marble House Project, and Tofte Lake Center. She was a staff writer for the BET+ series “First Wives Club” (Netflix Top Ten). She has assisted multiple television series in both the writers room and on set, including FOX’s “Filthy Rich,” NBC’s “This Is Us,” and Amazon’s “Harlem.” She has held fellowships with Sun Valley Writers Conference, Marcie Bloom Fellowship in Film, and The Gotham Film and Media Institute. She is a writing professor and arts educator at NYU, Rehabilitation through the Arts, and Harlem Children’s Zone.
