Jen Silverman

Jen Silverman is an American playwright, TV writer, poet, and novelist.

Silverman grew up living and traveling in Scandinavia, Asia, and Europe as well as the United States.^[1] They are the author of the books The Island Dwellers, an interlinked story collection published by Random House, and the novels We Play Ourselves and There's Going to Be Trouble.^[2]

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.^[3][4] Silverman is set to make 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.^[5]

Silverman completed a BA in comparative literature at Brown University,^[6] an MFA in playwriting at the University of Iowa, and an Artist Diploma at Juilliard under Marsha Norman and Chris Durang.

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.

• 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 ^[7]
• Highway Patrol^[8]
• The Moors^[9][10][11]
• Phoebe In Winter^[9]
• Pirates of the Cafeteria^[12]
• The Roommate^[11][13]
• Spain^[8]
• Still
• Wink^[14]
• Witch^[15]

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

Silverman has received the Yale Drama Series Award,^[6] Lilly Award, the Helen Merrill Fund Award in 2015,^[6] and the PoNY Fellowship (2016-2017).^[9] 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.