Michael Bradford

Michael Bradford (born January 23, 1965) is an American playwright who is a professor at the University of Connecticut and former artistic director of the Connecticut Repertory Theatre. In 2021, the Connecticut chapter of the NAACP named Bradford one of the "100 Most Influential Blacks in the State of Connecticut."

Biography Born and raised in Arkansas City, Kansas, Bradford attended high school in Colorado and moved to San Jose, California, soon after graduation. He worked as a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman, a gas station attendant, a fast food worker, and other odd jobs while reading African American women poets and writing what he called "bad poetry." He served 10 years in the US Navy as a systems operator and became active in the community theater scene on naval bases. While stationed at the submarine base in Groton, Connecticut, Bradford took an early release buyout to reenter civilian life.

After exiting the navy, Bradford worked for Electric Boat and attended the University of Connecticut's Avery Point campus in Groton. He earned a Bachelor of General Studies from UConn in 1998 and an MFA from Brooklyn College in 2000, continuing to work odd jobs and teaching writing at Avery Point.

Bradford lives in New London, Connecticut.

Bradford has received the Manhattan Theatre Club Fellowship, the Connecticut Office of the Arts Fellowship, The Lark Writers Residency, and the New York Stage and Film residency. To research and write his play Olives and Blood, he received a Research Scholar Fulbright fellowship to Granada in 2010–11.

Publications