I am the author of UN/MASKED, Memoirs of a Guerrilla Girl On Tour and PUSH/PUSHBACK, 9 Steps to Make a Difference with Activism and Art (because the world’s gone bananas). I write plays, poetry, essays and musicals about the connection between humans and the natural world. The Kaz Conference Writing Workshop was started in 2016 as a way for me to connect writers via small cohorts meeting weekly on zoom or during three day intensive, in-person weekends. I also direct, choreograph, speak, and teach Dance for Parkinson’s. My current work centers around feminism, art and the invisibility of the aging.
WRITE: ALL WRITE, COLUMBIA, Creative Nonfiction Writers Conference November 7-10, 2024 at the Spencertown Academy Arts Center, NY. Info and to apply click Here
READ: A Message In Teffilin: Dorothy Parker’s Ashes May 2023 and Red Jacket Books Story Contest Winner April 2023
The Mockingbird of 79th Street: Little Patuxent Review Winter 2023
RESIST: I have an essay in the UK’s YOU Magazine/Daily Mail – “What I wish I’d know about domestic violence” by Donna Kaz
GO BANANAS: Swann Galleries – An Interview with a Guerrilla Girl
Image Courtesy of Donna Kaz.
Here’s a longer, more official-sounding bio:
Donna Kaz is a multigenre writer, director/choreographer and activist. She leads the Kaz Conference Writing Workshop, offering creative writing classes in nonfiction, memoir, playwriting and screenwriting and the All Write, Columbia, Creative Nonfiction Writers Conference in Spencertown, NY. Since 2001 she has been the producing artistic director of Guerrilla Girls on Tour, a touring troupe which travels around the world with performances and talks focused on how to create humorous works which address social issues and prove feminists are funny at the same time. Kaz’s memoir, “UN/MASKED, Memoirs of a Guerrilla Girl On Tour,” (Skyhorse 2016) was named best nonfiction prose of 2017 by the Devil’s Kitchen Literary Festival. Her plays/musicals have been produced around the world including “Stamina” (American Renaissance Theatre/Best Ten Minute Plays of 2019 Smith and Kraus); “JOAN” (Edinburgh Festival Fringe) “Food, the musical” (Best New Musical Award, William Patterson University) “Waiting” (ARTC), “Performing Tribute 9/11” (Harlem Stage); “Feminists Are Funny, Pride edition” (Lincoln Center); “The History of Women in Theatre: Condensed” (Women Playwrights International, Dramalabet, Sweden); “Silence Is Violence” (Women’s Arts International Festival, Kendal UK) “If You Can Stand the Heat: and “The History of Women and Food” (City of Women Festival Slovenia). Her awards include a Jerry Kaufman Playwriting Award, Venus Theatre Lifetime Achievement Award, Henley Rose Playwriting Award, Ian MacMillan Writing Award, Boundary Stone Screenwriting Award, Skowhegan Medal and the Yoko Ono Courage Award for the Arts. She was named a “Notable Woman in American Theatre” by CUNY-TV and has been the Thomas P. Johnson Distinguished Visiting Artist at Rollins College. She has held residencies at Yaddo, Ucross, Blue Mountain, Djerassi, Wurlitzer, Mesa Refuge and Marble House. At Concordia College she directed and choreographed “Young Frankenstein” and “Songs For A New World” (2021). She has also led workshops on campuses in 48 US States and 17 countries. In 2016 she established the Kaz Conference Writing Workshop, a series of small, focused writing workshops on the east end of Long Island. Her latest play is “The Docent” won the 2020 Jerry Kaufman Award for Excellence in Playwriting and was included in the Garry Marshall New Works Festival, 2022 and ARTC’s 50th anniversary staged reading season. Her new eBook is “PUSH/PUSHBACK 9 Steps to make a Difference with Activism and Art (because the world’s gone bananas).” She is a 2022/23 Winterthur Research Fellow and a 2024 Ragdale Fellow.
