DGPD INSTRUCTOR

Sandy Asher

Their Dramatists Guild Professional Development Teaching History includes Writing Plays for Young Audiences.

Sandy Asher’s plays have been produced nationally and abroad. Across the Plains, commissioned by The Coterie, Kansas City, MO, was selected for the Kennedy Center's New Visions/New Voices Symposium.  In the Garden of the Selfish Giant won the Indiana Repertory Theatre/Bonderman National Playwriting Symposium Award, the New England Theatre Conference Aurand Harris Playwriting Award, and the American Alliance for Theatre and Education’s Distinguished Play Award. A Woman Called Truth has been honored with the AATE Distinguished Play Award, the Bonderman Award, and an ASSITEJ Outstanding Play for Young Audiences citation.  Jesse and Grace: A Best Friends Story, commissioned by Pollyanna Theatre, Austin, TX, was chosen for development by Northwestern University's Purple Crayon Players and won a third AATE Distinguished Play Award.  Walking Toward America, developed at NYU’s New Plays for Young Audiences workshop at the Provincetown Playhouse, was selected for the 2015 United Solo Festival in New York City. 

A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship grant in playwriting, AATE's Charlotte Chorpenning Award for a distinguished body of work in children's theatre, and an Aurand Harris Fellowship grant from the Children's Theatre Foundation of America, Ms. Asher recently received a CTFA Founders Development Grant to produce American Theatre for the Very Young: A Digital Festival, which debuted in March, 2018, on Vimeo.  Sandy is also the author of more than two dozen books for young readers, including the acclaimed picture books Too Many Frogs! and Chicken Story Time. She is also the editor of five anthologies, among them With All My Heart, With All My Mind: 13 Stories About Growing Up Jewish, (winner of the National Jewish Book Award for children's literature), Writing It Right:  How Children’s Authors Revise and Sell Their Stories, and American Heartbeat:  True Stories Told in Scenes and Monologues. 

Sandy’s plays are available from Dramatic Publishing and YOUTHPlays; six are anthologized in Tell Your Story: The Plays and Playwriting of Sandra Fenichel Asher.  She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Authors Guild, and Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.  She and her husband live in Lancaster, PA, with their cat, Friday, and dog, Gracie.