Kareem Fahmy (Director) is a Canadian-born director and playwright of Egyptian descent. He is a 2017-2018 National Directors Fellow with The O’Neill Theater Center and the National New Play Network. He has directed and co-conceived a number of world premiere productions including James Scruggs’s 3/Fifths (3LD, New York Times Top 5 Must-See Shows), Sevan K. Greene’s This Time (Sheen Center, New York Times Critics’ Pick), and Victor Lesniewski’s Couriers and Contrabands (TBG Theatre). Other: Adam Kraar’s Alternating Currents (world premiere, Working Theater), Rohina Malik’s The Mecca Tales (NY premiere, Voyage Theater Company), Nikkole Salter’s Indian Head (world premiere, Luna Stage). Kareem’s work as a playwright has been developed and produced at Noor Theatre, Rising Circle Theater Collective, The Lark, Fault Line Theatre, and The Atlantic Theater Company. He is currently adapting the seminal Egyptian novel The Yacoubian Building for the stage. Kareem has developed plays with New York Theatre Workshop (where he is a Usual Suspect), MCC, Second Stage, Soho Rep, New Dramatists, The Lark, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Sundance, The Civilians, Noor Theatre, Silk Road Rising, and Berkeley Rep. He is a founder of Maia Directors, a consulting group for organizations and artists engaging with Middle Eastern stories. MFA: Columbia University. www.KareemFahmy.com

Bess Welden (Playwright) has been making theater as a writer, performer, and educator for nearly 25 years, and in her adopted home state of Maine since 2001. Refuge * Malja * ملجأ marks her playwriting debut on Portland Stage’s mainstage after developing the script in the 2017 Little Festival of the Unexpected and a week-long residency at Hewnoaks Artist Colony. Her one-act play Madelines(2015) premiered in PS’s Studio Series, and her two solo comedies Big Mouth Thunder Thighs (2013) and The Passion of the Hausfrau (2009) were also workshopped through Little Festival and premiered in the Studio Theater. In 2017, her original multi-disciplinary performance project, Legbala is a River, premiered at Mayo Street Arts, and her play Death Wings received at staged reading with Real Live Theatre in Northampton, MA and was workshopped with professional and student actors at Colby College. In addition, she helped develop the script for and directed Not Always Happy, written and performed by Portland blogger/memoirist/social justice storyteller Kari Wagner-Peck. Her children’s theater piece, Magic in the Attic, premiered at Theater LJCC in Birmingham, AL (2015) and her latest script for young actors/audiences, Mergirl Saves the Waves, will be workshopped in July 2018 through PS’s Theater for Kids summer program. Bess is the librettist of two musical works, A Little Miracle (Lincoln Center premiere) and Eagle Girl, composed by David Stock, and has co-written and performed four other solo plays. As a performer (MFA, National Theater Conservatory) she has appeared with the Denver Center Theater Company, Williamstown Theater Festival, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Hangar Theater, Montana Shakespeare in the Parks, Portland Stage, Dramatic Repertory Company, the Opera House at Boothbay, Mad Horse Theatre, Portland Symphony Orchestra, Southwest Michigan Symphony, White Plains Performing Arts Center, Commonweal Theater, among many others. Bess is a Teaching Artist in Colby College’s Department of Theater and Dance where she has directed mainstage productions of Tartuffe and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as well as facilitated/directed the Activist Storytelling Workshop/The Passion Project. She is a long-time and proud PS Affiliate Artist and Teaching Artist. www.besswelden.com.

John Cariani is an actor and a playwright. He has appeared on Broadway and Off Broadway, at regional theaters across the country, and in several films and television shows. He’s been nominated for a Tony Award and has done movies with Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and Ed Asner. Most people seem to know him from "Law & Order" where his character, Forensics Tech Beck, is alive and well in reruns. As a playwright, John is best known for his first play, Almost, Maine, which premiered at Portland (Maine) Stage Company in 2004 and opened Off-Broadway in 2006. It has since become one of the most frequently produced plays in the United States and has been translated into nearly twenty languages. His other plays include cul-de-sac (Transport Group), Last Gas (Portland Stage Company, Geva Theater Center), and LOVE/SICK (Portland Stage Company, Hartford TheaterWorks). Both Almost, Maine and Last Gas are published by Dramatists Play Service. Originally from Presque Isle, Maine, John is a graduate of Amherst College. He lives in New York City. www.almostmaine.com

Joe Landry’s plays have been produced across the country and internationally, and include It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, Reefer Madness, Vintage Hitchcock: A Live Radio Play, Eve & Co., Beautiful, Hollywood Babylon, and Numb. Mr. Landry attended Playwright’s Horizons/NYU, founded Second Guess Theatre Company in Connecticut and is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America. He is currently developing new projects for the stage and screen.

Brendan Pelsue is a playwright, librettist, and translator whose work has been produced in New York and regionally. His play Wellesley Girl premiered at the Humana Festival of New American Plays. Hagoromo, a dance-opera piece for which he wrote the libretto, has appeared at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Pocantico Center. Other work includes New Domestic Architecture at the Yale Carlotta Festival, Read to Me at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Lost Weekend with the Actors Theatre of Louisville Apprentice Company, Parking Lot, Riverbank: a Noh Play for Northerly Americans at the Yale School of Drama. Commissions include South Coast Repertory, American Opera Projects, Westport Country Playhouse, and the Actors Theatre of Louisville. He was a 2017 artist-in-residence at Chateau de la Napoule, France, where he produced the podcast We Are Not These People. He is currently working on an adaptation of Paul Harding’s novel Tinkers, a new translation of Molière’s Don Juan, and One Thousand Years of Music and Two Americans, a chamber opera, with composer Matthew Suttor. Originally from Newburyport, MA, he received his MFA from Yale School of Drama and his BA from Brown University, where he received the Weston Prize in playwriting.

Sarah Ruhl’s plays include How to Transcend a Happy Marriage, For Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday, The Oldest Boy, In the Next Room, or the vibrator play, The Clean House, Orlando, Late: a cowboy song, Dear Elizabeth and Stage Kiss. She is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and a Tony Award nominee. Her plays have been produced on Broadway at the Lyceum by Lincoln Center Theater, off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons, Second Stage, and at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater. Her plays have been produced regionally all over the country and have also been produced internationally, and translated into over twelve languages. Ms. Ruhl received her M.F.A. from Brown University where she studied with Paula Vogel. She has received the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright award, the Susan Smith Blackburn award, the Whiting award, the Lily Award, a PEN award for mid-career playwrights, and the MacArthur “genius” award. Her book of essays 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write was published by Faber and Faber. She teaches at the Yale School of Drama and lives in Brooklyn with her family.