Janine Nabers

Janine Nabers is an American playwright and television writer.

Early life Nabers was born in Houston, Texas to Janet and Cornelius Nabers. She attended Alief Elsik High School in Houston. Nabers has a BA in theater from Ithaca College and an MFA in playwriting from The New School. She is also a graduate of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at the Juilliard School in New York City.

Career

Theater Nabers was initially interested in becoming a stage actress but her frustration with the lack of Black roles in plays encouraged her to try playwriting instead. As a student at Juilliard, her play Annie Bosh is Missing was chosen as a finalist for the 2012-2013 Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition. Annie Bosh is Missing follows 22-year-old drug addict Annie Bosh who wanders the tumultuous streets of Houston after Hurricane Katrina. The play premiered at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 2013. In 2013, Nabers was the New York Foundation for the Arts Playwriting fellowship

For 2013-2014, Nabers was the AETNA Playwriting Fellow at Hartford Stage. Nabers' play, Serial Black Face, about a single mother coping with the disappearance of her son during the Atlanta child murders, won the 2014 Yale Drama Series prize. The award included publication by the Yale University Press. Serial Black Face had its world premiere at the Actor's Express Theatre Company in Atlanta, Georgia in 2016.

Nabers' other works include A Swell in the Ground, which premiered at the Gift Theatre in Chicago, Illinois in 2017 and Welcome to Jesus, which premiered at The American Theater Company in Chicago in 2017, Juniper; Jubilee and The Peterson Show.

Nabers is an alumna of the Ars Nova Play Group, the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, the Dramatists Guild Playwriting Fellowship, the MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and the 2010 and 2011 Sundance Theatre Labs. She is also a member of the MCC Playwrights Coalition and the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group at Primary Stages.

Television Nabers' television writing credits include Bravo's first scripted series Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce, Lifetime's UnREAL and AMC's Dietland. She is credited as Supervising Producer on the first and second episodes of HBO's Watchmen, winning a Writers Guild Award in 2020. and was Co-Executive Producer on Netflix's Away. Nabers was a writer on the third season of Atlanta, winning a Peabody Award. In 2021, she signed an overall deal with Amazon Studios. In 2023, Swarm, the series Nabers co-created with Donald Glover, was released on Amazon’s Prime Video. In 2024, Nabers won a NAACP Image Award for Best Limited Series and was nominated for her first Emmy for Best Writing for Limited Series.

Deadline reported that Nabers is in development on her third project for Amazon, a collaboration with Mattel, on a live action Shani Girl series, with Nabers as showrunner.

Works

Theatre

Juniper; Jubilee Annie Bosh is Missing Serial Black Face A Swell in the Ground Welcome to Jesus The Peterson Show

Television Episode 2x02: Rule#77: Don't Blow the Bubble

Episode 2x03: Rule#8: Timing is Everything

Episode 2x05: Rule #72: It's Never Too Late to Be a Mean Girl

Episode 2x06: Rule #25: Beware the Second Chance

Episode 2x08: Rule #79: Labels are for Canned Goods

Episode 2x10: Rule #36: If You Can't Stand the Heat, you're Cooked

Episode 2x11: Rule #118: Let Her Eat Cake

Episode 2x07: Rule #14: No Means... No

Episode 2x12: Rule #876: Everything Does Not Happen for a Reason

Episode 4x03: Rule #706: Let Them Eat Cupcakes

Episode 2x02: Insurgent

Episode 2x03: Guerilla

Episode 2x05: Infiltration

Episode 2x06: Casualty

Episode 2x07: Ambush

Episode 1x02: Tender Belly

Episode 1x03: Y Not

Episode 1x04: F... This

Episode 1x05: Plum Tuckered

Episode 1x07: Monster High

Episode 1x08: Red Fatties

Episode 1x09: Woman Down

Selected works

Nabers, Janine. "Juniper; Jubilee." Off Off Broadway Festival Plays, 33rd Series, edited by Thomas C. Dunn. New York: Samuel French, 2008 Nabers, Janine. Letters to Kurt, Playscripts Incorporated, 2012 Nabers, Janine. Decade: Twenty New Plays about 9/11 and Its Legacy, edited by Samual Adamson, London: Nick Hern Books, 2012 Nabers, Janine. Serial Black Face. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015 Nabers, Janine. "Serial Black Face." The Kilroys List: 97 Monologues and Scenes by Female and Trans Playwrights. Volume One, edited by Annah Feinberg for The Kilroys, New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2017