Jacqueline Goldfinger (she/they) began their career as a teaching artist and dramaturg with a focus on education and new work. Their career evolved into Literary Management and Artistic Administration. Today, they are a writer, educator, and arts advocate who works nationally and internationally on performative texts which interweave humor and heartbreak, speaking to our shared humanity while honoring the nuanced identities of each character.
They are currently the Chair of the 2022 LMDA International Performing Arts Conference and will be a Presenter at this year’s LAMBDA Literary Awards. They will be the Visiting Professor of Theatre, Head of MFA Dramaturgy at Indiana University for the 2022-23 academic year.
They are an Affiliated Artist at the BMI Lehman Engel Workshop, New Georges, and the National New Play Network. Their opera and choral libretti have been performed and broadcast around the world. Their new full-length opera, Alice Tierney, with Composer Dr. Melissa Dunphy won the Opera America Discovery Grant and the Schlichting Commission. In 2023, it will world premiere at Oberlin Opera and then move to Opera Columbus. Their short opera and choral libretti have been produced at Decameron Opera Project, Resonance Works, San Diego Opera, La Jolla Playhouse’s Without Walls Festival, BBC Radio 3 (UK), Voces8 (UK), St. Martin in the Fields (UK), Mendelssohn Choruses all over the U.S., and others.
Their plays have won the Yale Drama Prize, Smith Prize, Generations Award, and Barrymore Award. Their plays have been on The Kilroy’s List. They’ve been a Finalist for the LAMBDA Literary Award, Henley Award, Woodward-Newman Award, and received a Special Citation from the McNally Award.
Their plays have been produced by The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Contemporary American Theatre Festival, Court Theatre (New Zealand), École nationale de théâtre (Canada), Perseverance Theatre, Hangar Theatre, Seattle Public Theatre, and others. Their plays have been developed at The National Theater (UK), New Georges, La Mama (Umbria & NYC), Sewanee Writers Conference, McCarter Theatre, Disquiet (Portugal) and others. Their plays and choral libretti have been published by Yale Press, Edition Peters, Concord Theatricals (formerly Samuel French), Playscripts, Stage Partners and others. Their poetry has been published in Blackbird Literary Journal, Queer Beyond Words Anthology, and inBetween Literary Magazine.
As a dramaturg, they have worked with La Jolla Playhouse, The Old Globe, Native Voices, PlayPenn, New Village Arts, and others. Their work has been supported by Yaddo, National Endowment for the Arts, Millay Colony, Sloan Foundation, Orchard Project, Drama League, Granada Artist Residency, Independence Foundation Fellowship, among others.
As an educator, they have taught playwriting and dramaturgy at Temple University (graduate), University of Pennsylvania (undergraduate), Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center (National Theatre Institute), University of California, Davis (graduate), University of California, San Diego (adult ed), Dramatists Guild (Dramatists Guild Institute) and others. They were awarded a Special Citation for Teaching and Mentoring by LMDA (the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas) in 2019.
Their academic writing includes two books, Playwriting with Purpose and Writing Adaptations and Translations for the Stage (co-written with Allison Horsley), published by Routledge. They have also written articles for “The Dramatist,” “Journal of Theory and Dramatic Criticism,” “August Wilson Journal,” TCG’s “Audience Revolution,” and others. They have moderated panels and interviews for Innovations in Socially Distant Performance at Princeton University, Kelly Writer’s House at University of Pennsylvania, LMDA International Conference, ATHE Conference, What’s Next in the Arts Symposium, AWP Conference, and others.