Howard L. Craft

Playwright

Father, husband, playwright, poet, essayist and arts educator. He is the author of two books of poems, Across the Blue Chasm (Big Drum Press 2000), and Raising the Sky (Jacar Press 2016). His poetry also appears in Home is Where: An Anthology of African-American Poets from the Carolinas, edited by Kwame Dawes. His essays have appeared in The Paris Review and have been included in The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre (Routledge Press 2019). He is the author of several plays including:  Freight:  The Five Incarnations of Able Green, a New York Times Critic Pick for March 2015; Calypso and the Midnight Marauders, Orange Light, and The Jade City Chronicles Volume 1: The Super Spectacular Badass Herald M. F.  Jones. He is the creator of the first African-American super hero radio serial:  The Jade City Pharaoh.  Craft is a recipient of the North Carolina Playwriting Fellowship, and a two-time winner of the NCCU New Play Project. As an arts educator, Craft works as a creative writing instructor for Mike Wiley Productions and is the current Piller Professor of the Practice at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill for the Writing for the Stage and Screen program. Craft lives in Durham, North Carolina with his wife, young son, and beagle Shazam.