Joanna H. Kraus

Discipline: Playwriting

Based In: Laguna Woods, CA

Year at Millay: 1983

Awards/Honors: Prize Winner, The Old Miner Children’s Playwriting Contest, Theatre for Youth and Education Center, Utah Valley University, Orem, UT (2021); Award Winner, The Marilyn Hall Awards for Youth Theater, NYCPlaywrights, New York, NY (2010); Award Winner, Distinguished Play Award, American Alliance for Theatre and Education, Washington, DC (1996); First Prize Winner, IUPUT National Playwriting Competition, Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN (1989); Fellow, Creative Artists Public Service Fellowship, New York State Council on the Arts, New York, NY/National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, DC (1975–1976); Award Winner, Charlotte B. Chorpenning Playwright Award, American Alliance for Theatre and Education, Washington, DC (1971); Artist-in-Residence, Theatre, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Banff, Canada; Artist-in-Residence, Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY.

Website: https://www.joannakraus.com/home.html

Joanna H. Kraus is an award-winning playwright of twenty produced and published plays. The Ice Wolf (Dramatic Publishing), and Remember My Name (Concord Theatricals, formerly Samuel French) were both produced off-off Broadway. The former appears in several anthologies and has a Spanish version. Short plays Me2, The Dragon Hammer, The Tale of Oniroku, and Tamales and Roses are included in Five Plays for Young Audiences (Leicester Bay Theatricals). Kraus received the Charlotte Chorpenning Cup and the Distinguished Play Award from the American Alliance for Theatre and Education. In addition, she’s received commissions to dramatize history, among them, Sunday Gold and Angel in the Night (Dramatic Publishing). Her latest play Champion was a winner in the 2021 Old Miner Children’s Playwriting Contest (Leicester Bay Theatricals).

Picture books include A Night of Tamales and Roses (Shenanigan Books) listed in the Bank Street College of Education edition of Best Children’s Books; Blue Toboggan (Mascot Books); Bravo, Benny; Oh, Little Ham of Buffalo, a Korean Adoption Memoir; Dog on Trial (all from Mirror Publishing); and The Blue Jeans Rebellion (Leicester Bay Books).

For more than twenty years, she was the children’s book reviewer for the Bay Area News Group and is a member of The Dramatists Guild and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). Kraus is Professor Emerita of the State University of New York at Brockport, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, and holds an MA from UCLA and an EdD from Columbia University. She has lives in Southern California.