Jen Silverman

Jen Silverman is an American playwright, TV writer, poet, and novelist. Silverman's work frequently explores legacies of power and violence, how individuals navigate complex dynamics and social contracts in community, and how people seek to transform by rewriting their personal, familial, or political histories. Silverman works across a wide range of genres and styles, with some plays operating within the rules of absurdism and others working inside realism. As a queer person themself, Silverman frequently writes about sexuality and gender expression in their works. They have spoken openly about how their investment in creating rich nuanced characters, many of whom are queer and female, but whose queerness or gender are not solely representational aspects. They were born in the US, but moved to Japan at a very young age. In their first 13 years of life they lived in a number of countries, among them the US, France, Japan, Finland, Sweden, Italy, New Zealand, and Canada. They attribute some of their thematic interests to their lived experience of frequently being an outsider to a place or culture, and navigating complex questions of cultural rules and expectations in each new place.

Silverman has personally identified themself as genderqueer and uses they/them pronouns.

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

Career 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. Silverman made 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.

Silverman has also authored multiple books. They have writtenThe Island Dwellers, an interlinked story collection published by Random House, and the novels We Play Ourselves and There's Going to Be Trouble.

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.

In 2016 they were awarded the Playwrights of New York Fellowship, an award that gives $100,000 of support to the recipient and covers housing expenses for a year. This allowed Silverman to quit their day job teaching and focus on writing full-time. Still (2013) Pirates of the Cafeteria (2014) The Roommate (2015) The Moors (2016) 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 (2016) Witch (2018) Wink (2019) Spain (2023) Highway Patrol (2024)

Short plays

The Astonishing and Dangerous History of Mazefield the Frog (2015) Hippos of the Eastern Enclosure(2017) The Visitations (2020) Real American Dinner Party (2020) Ubu Anew (A Play for Strange People) (2021) Your Mother in the Night Sky (2021)

Musicals Black Swan (2026)

Books

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

Awards Silverman has received the Yale Drama Series Award, The American Library in Paris welcomed Jen Silverman for a virtual discussion of their novel, There's Going to be Trouble, in June of 2024 as a Scholar of Note.

The OSCAR® qualifying short film Troy, which they wrote, screened at 70 festivals internationally, including Cannes and Sundance (where it was nominated for Best Short Film). It won Best Comedy at the Aspen Shortsfest, and Best Narrative Short at the L.A. Outfest and is featured online in The New Yorker’s Screening Room.