Amy Wheeler
Amy Wheeler is the former Executive Director of Hedgebrook, a nonprofit organization supporting a global community of women and non-binary writers authoring change on Whidbey Island, where she served for 13 years. Wheeler is a feminist,[1] playwright, actor[2] and an alumna of Hedgebrook and Yaddo. Her plays are Getting Over the Rainbow (formerly Wizzer Pizzer), Two Birds & a Stone, Driven (formerly Weeping Woman), Every Atom, Always Beginning, and Intersection. Projects currently in development: The Last Babushka and A Mighty Craic.
As Executive Director of Hedgebrook, Wheeler founded the Creative Advisory Council with alumna Gloria Steinem. Under her leadership, Hedgebrook launched a popular Radical Hospitality cookbook,[3][4][5] received a prestigious Humanitas Prize, and launched the first screenwriters' residency for women.
Born and raised in Oklahoma, she is the daughter of Jim (a Methodist minister) and Jo Wheeler.[6] She holds an MFA from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop and has taught playwriting at the University of Iowa, Cornish College of the Arts, Freehold Studio Theatre Lab, Richard Hugo House, and in ACT Theatre's Young Playwrights Program.[7]
She lives on Whidbey Island, WA, with her wife and son.
Recognition
Amy was playwright-in-residence at Stark Raving Theatre from 2005 - 2007.[8] She has received a New York Foundation for the Arts grant and an Artist Trust fellowship in Ireland. Her play "Wizzer Pizzer" was included in the 2012 Manifesto Series V.3: A THEATRE OF DEFIANCE[9]
Productions
"Two Birds & a Stone", OCU, Oklahoma City, OK, 2015[7]
"Wizzer Pizzer: Getting Over the Rainbow", Theatre22, Seattle, WA, 2015[10]
References
- "Amy Wheeler, Hedgebrook, and feminism". The Feminist Wire.
- "Shakespeare Festival offers tales of power, honor, redemption". South Whidbey Record.
- The Christian Science Monitor. "Radical hospitality, nurturing comfort: Italian chicken stew". The Christian Science Monitor.
- "'Radical hospitality' at the Hedgebrook writers colony". The Seattle Times.
- Los Angeles Times (14 February 2014). "Meals beyond words from the Hedgebrook writers' retreat". latimes.com.
- "Theatrical Mustang Podcast". podbean.com.
- "OCU presents "Two Birds And A Stone" by nationally recognized Oklahoma playwright Amy Wheeler". city-sentinel.com.
- "Weeping Woman". Portland Mercury.
- "Manifesto Series V.3: A THEATER OF DEFIANCE: Naomi Iizuka, Yussef El Guindi, Bret Fetzer, Stephen McCandless, Elizabeth Heffron, Chris Jeffries, Paul Mullin, Wayne Rawley, Amy Wheeler, K. Brian Neel: 9780972476355: Amazon.com: Books". amazon.com.
- "'Wizzer Pizzer' Is Entertaining and the Perfect Production for Seattle's Capitol Hill". The Huffington Post.