Leanna James Blackwell is a writer, editor, and playwright. She began her career in theatre, working as an actor and director in experimental theatre companies in San Francisco. Her theatre experience, along with her childhood education in Catholic schools, instructed her in the art of ritual, imagination, and the music of language, all of which inform her writing. She has written plays about subjects ranging from mixed-race adoption to the depiction of “evil” women in fairy tales to the inside world of Shakespearean actors. Leanna is a 15-year member of the Northampton Playwrights Lab and co-producer of a biannual new play festival, Play by Play, funded by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.