Jen Silverman

Jen Silverman
Occupation	Playwright, TV writer, poet, novelist
Education	Brown University (BA) University of Iowa (MFA) Juilliard School (GrDip)

Jen Silverman is an American playwright, TV writer, poet, and novelist. Silverman's work frequently explores the perception of women. Their works discuss how women push boundaries and defy the expectations placed upon them. As a queer person themselves, Silverman frequently writes about sexuality and gender expression in their works. They have spoken openly about how they want to create queer, female characters that are authentic and uniquely themselves.

Silverman has many accolades from their published works including: Yale Drama Series Award, Lilly Award, the Helen Merrill Fund Award in 2015, the PoNY Fellowship (2016-2017), New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council fellowship, and is a Scholar of Note at The American Library in Paris.

Life

Jen Silverman grew up living and traveling in Scandinavia, Asia, and Europe as well as the United States. They were born in the US, but moved to Japan at a very young age. In their first 13 years of life they lived in seven countries: the US, Japan, Finland, Sweden, Italy, New Zealand, and Canada. They attribute their writing style to their lived experiences of frequently being a newcomer and traveling extensively.

Silverman has personally identified themselves as genderqueer and uses they/them pronouns.

Education

Silverman completed a BA in comparative literature at Brown University, an MFA in playwriting at the University of Iowa, and an Artist Diploma at Juilliard working under Marsha Norman and Chris Durang.

Career

Silverman has written a number of plays and has written for TV and film, including Netflix's Tales of the City and Tokyo Vice on which they are also a producer. Silverman has published essays on the relationship between art and morality in The New York Times and Vogue. Silverman made their Broadway debut as a playwright in the fall of 2024 with their play The Roommate at the Booth Theatre, starring Mia Farrow and Patti Lupone.

Silverman has also authored multiple books. They have writtenThe Island Dwellers, an interlinked story collection published by Random House, and the novels We Play Ourselves and There's Going to Be Trouble.

They have taught theatre and playwriting classes at the University of Iowa, Playwrights Horizons Theater School at New York University, and ESPA (at Primary Stages). Silverman completed residencies at MacDowell Colony (three-time fellow), New Harmony, Hedgebrook, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and SPACE on Ryder Farm.

In 2016 they were awarded the Playwrights of New York Fellowship, and award that gives $100,000 of support to the recipient and covers housing expenses for a year. This allowed Silverman to quit their day job teaching and focus on writing full-time.

Works

Full-length plays

• Phoebe In Winter (2013)
• Still (2013)
• Pirates of the Cafeteria (2014)
• The Roommate (2015)
• The Moors (2016)
• Collective Rage: A Play In 5 Betties; In Essence, A Queer And Occasionally Hazardous Exploration; Do You Remember When You Were In Middle School And You Read About Shackleton And How He Explored The Antarctic?; Imagine The Antarctic As A Pussy And It’s Sort Of Like That (2016)
• Witch (2018)
• Wink (2019)
• Spain (2023)
• Highway Patrol (2024)

Short plays

• The Astonishing and Dangerous History of Mazefield the Frog (2015)
• Hippos of the Eastern Enclosure(2017)
• The Visitations (2020)
• Real American Dinner Party (2020)
• Ubu Anew (A Play for Strange People) (2021)
• Your Mother in the Night Sky (2021)

Books

• The Island Dwellers: Stories (2018)
• We Play Ourselves: A Novel (2021)
• Bath: A Poetry Chapboook (2021)
• There's Going to Be Trouble: A Novel (2024)

Awards

Silverman has received the Yale Drama Series Award, Lilly Award, the Helen Merrill Fund Award in 2015, the PoNY Fellowship (2016-2017), and has received the MacDowell Fellowship three times. Recent honors include fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim. The American Library in Paris welcomed Jen Silverman for a virtual discussion of their novel, There's Going to be Trouble, in June of 2024 as a Scholar of Note.

The short film Troy, which they co-wrote, was nominated for Best Short Film at both the Stockholm and Sundance film festivals. It was also nominated for Best International Short at the TLVFest. It won Best Comedy at the Aspen Shortsfest, and Best Narrative Short at the L.A. Outfest.