Janine Nabers hails from Houston, Texas. She holds a BA in Drama from Ithaca College, an MFA in playwriting from the New School for Drama, and is an alumna of the National Theater Institute. Janine's plays have been a finalist for: the Princess Grace Award, the Victory Garden's Ignition playwriting award, The Theodore Ward Playwriting prize, and the POPS TNT playwriting award. Her play WEST OF THE WILLOW TREE is MCC Theatre's 2008 nominee for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Last summer, her play JUNIPER; JUBILEE was the winner of the Samuel French one act play festival and will be published in January of 2009. A resident playwright of Odyssey Productions and a former Artistic intern at Naked Angels, Janine is a proud member of the Ars Nova play group, the Harlem Arts Alliance and the Dramatist Guild. She lives in Manhattan and is 26 years old.

I am a female playwright of Color. I have been writing plays since I was 19 years old. I write for a social cause and many of the works are historically based (as I often interview people). All of my plays are centered around strong and evocative women who are trapped inside a world they are trying desperately to break out of. The women in the pieces I write do not represent the stereotypes of black women in history: domesticated mammies or loose bodies. Instead, in my plays, they represent the air we breathe and the rain we feel. They move in slow motion and speak in tongues. They are unpredictable and fluid like Mother Nature itself. The Women in my plays are metaphors for hope and change and the strength it takes to let go and move forward.

--Janine Nabers

Janine's addition to the list of AAPEX playwrights brings the total to 95.