R. ERIC THOMAS, PLAYWRIGHT R. Eric Thomas, a national bestselling author and playwright, won the 2016 Barrymore Award for Best New Play and the 2018 Dramatist Guild Lanford Wilson Award, was a finalist for the 2017 Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award and two 2021 Lambda Literary Awards. He was on the writing staff for the Peabody Award-winning series Dickinson (AppleTV+) and Better Things (FX) and has been commissioned or produced on stage by Baltimore Center Stage, Everyman Theater, Arden Theatre Company, Theatre Exile, Simpatico Theatre, Azuka Theatre, Single Carrot Theatre, About Face Theatre, City Theatre Miami, Act II Playhouse and more. He is also the long-running host of The Moth in Philadelphia and D.C. and for four years was a Senior Staff Writer for Elle.com where he wrote “Eric Reads the News,” a daily current events and culture column with hundreds of thousands of monthly readers. In 2020 he released two books: HERE FOR IT, a debut memoir-in-essays that was a Read with Jenna book club pick featured on Today, and RECLAIMING HER TIME, a biography of Rep. Maxine Waters co-authored with Helena Andrews-Dyer. He is an alumnus of The Foundry, the Lambda Literary Fellowship and the Ingram New Works Fellowship. R. Eric Thomas