Barry Jay Kaplan

I am the author of three historical novels Black Orchid (with Nicholas Meyer), and Biscayne (Simon and Shuster) both selections of the Literary Guild and That Wilder Woman (Bantam Books). My short stories have appeared in Descant, Bryant Literary Review, Central Park, Appearances, Talking River, Kerouac Review, Northern New England Review, Upstreet, Brink, Amarillo Bay, Perigee, Apple Valley Review, Drum, Brink, New Haven Review and others and have twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. One of my stories was selected as one of five Best Stories on the Web. I am also the co-author (with Rosemarie Tichler) of the interview books, Actors at Work (Faber and Faber) and The Playwright at Work (University of Chicago Press). I have an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop where I was research assistant to Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

As a playwright I have won the Whitfield Cooke Best Play Award from New Dramatists and a grant from New York State Council on the Arts for my history play, Blood and Water. Landscape of Desire is published by Smith and Krause and was the American representative to the 25th Australian National Playwriting Conference. My musical biography of Rock Hudson, Rock and Roy (music by Stephen Weinstock), was developed at New Dramatists with grants from the Frederick Loewe Foundation and the Cameron Mackintosh Foundation and had workshop productions at New Dramatists in New York and at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, both directed by Simon Callow. Like Love (music by Lewis Flinn) won a DramaLeague New Directors/New Works Project Prize and premiered at the New York Musical Theatre Festival. My musical Step Aside (music by William Foster McDaniel) had workshops at the York Theatre in New York and at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.