Barbara Seyda is a queer, Polish-American playwright, screenwriter, journalist and poet. She has a B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and M.F.A. from Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of Art. Her career began as a journalist for ‘Outweek’ in New York City in the mid-1980s. As a member of ACT UP and Queer Nation, she used writing, photography, site-specific performance, civil disobedience, critical discourse and public protest as a response to the AIDS crisis.

She was a photo researcher for Stewart, Tabori & Chang on their 12-volume series, ‘The Smithsonian Guide to Historic America’ and photo editor at ELLE Magazine. She taught at Pratt Institute, The New School for Social Research, Rutgers University and University of Arizona Continuing Education. Her published books are ‘Gaudy Sorrow’ (forthcoming, 2024, Finishing Line Press), ‘Women in Love’ (Bulfinch/Little, Brown) winner of a Lambda Literary Award, ‘Nomads of a Desert City’ (University of Arizona Press) and ‘Celia, A Slave’ (Yale University Press) winner of the Yale Drama Prize.

Seyda’s currently collaborating with female, rap artist/composer Angel Haze on a new hip hop opera based on her script ‘Celia’ which is under consideration for film adaptation. She’s also working with award-winning film director Olga Chajdas (Fipresci Prize, Silver Lion) on a new screenplay ‘Blood Soup’. Inspired by the diaries of Jewish and Polish children during the Occupation and adapted from her stage play, the script cross-cuts between the lives of five children in Warsaw in 1942. Seyda lives in Tucson, on the Sonoran Desert home of the Tohono O’odham people.

For theatre, tv and film, Adam Peck, Synchronicity Management. theadampeck@gmail.com

For Yale University Press, Robert Pranzatelli, publicist, robert.pranzatelli@yale.edu

All other inquiries, barbaraseyda@yahoo.com. Photo by A.T. Willett.