Christina Quintana

CQ Quintana (also known as C. Quintana and previously known as Christina Quintana) is a Cuban-American playwright, poet, and writer. Her works have been published in literary journals and produced across the United States. Quintana's full-length audio play The 126-Year Old Artist is available via Audible, published in 2023, Scissoring, another full-length play, was published and licensed by Dramatists Play Service in 2019, and The Heart Wants, her chapbook of poetry, was published in 2016 by Finishing Line Press.

Education and career Quintana attended Ursuline Academy New Orleans and the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, a performing-arts high school. She graduated from College of Santa Fe in 2010 with a degree in theatre and a minor in creative writing. Under the guidance of Charles Mee, she earned an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University School of the Arts. The project premiered at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and expanded to The Fortune Society, an organization that helps previously incarcerated people integrate into society.

Much of her writing revolves around themes of injustice, loss, queerness, and marginalized identities.

Personal life Quintana, who is nonbinary and gender non-conforming, changed her professional listing from Christina to C. in 2022. She goes by CQ and legally petitioned for this name change in 2023.

Books

Awards Quintana is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships for her writing: 2014 Lambda Literary Emerging Voices Fellow in Fiction 2017 Van Lier New Voices Fellowship 2017 Arch & Bruce Brown Playwriting Competition – Honorable Mention: Azul 2017-18 New York's Playwrights Realm writing fellowship recipient 2018 MacDowell Fellowship 2021 Audible Emerging Playwrights Commission ("The 126-Year Old Artist") 2022 Café Royal Cultural Foundation Fellowship in Literature ("The Twisted Fate of La Media Luna") 2023 Carthage College New Play Initiative Commission ("The Genderless Play Experiment") 2022-2023 New York State Council on the Arts/INTAR Artist Commission ("End of Play") 2023-2024 Life Jacket Theatre Company Trans* Playwriting Commission ("Joyful Joyfriends")

Plays Enter Your Sleep (2012): Productions with Elm Theatre New Orleans, Baby Crow Productions, and Yale Cabaret Blank Canvas (2014): Production (awarded "Best Short") in the 12th annual Downtown Urban Theater Festival Scissoring (2014): World Premiere at INTAR (2018); staged reading (2014) at the Alliance Theatre Three Thousand Seizures (2015): Semifinalist for Southern Rep Ruby Prize Evensong (2016): World Premiere at Astoria Performing Arts Center The Great Lonely Roamer & The Night that Changed Everything (2016): Workshop Production in NYU Voices Festival Citizen Scientist (2018): Public reading at the 2018 First Light Festival, hosted by the EST/Sloan Project (commission) Mr. San Man (2018): Studio Retreat and public readings at the Lark Theatre Azul (2019, 2021): Southern Rep, Diversionary Theatre Company Beastgirl (with music by Janelle Lawrence | adapted from the chapbook by Elizabeth Acevedo) (2022): Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Studio K The 126-Year-Old Artist (2023): Audible The Genderless Play Experiment (2023, 2024): Carthage College New Play Initiative, KCACTF Region III

Filmography Year Title Notes 2020 The Baker and the Beauty Episode: "Side Effects" 2024–2025 Alert: Missing Persons Unit 2 episodes 2024 Orphan Black: Echoes 2 episodes