Playwright Rachael Carnes ambled into a ‘How to Write a 10-Minute Play’ class at her local community theatre in Fall of 2016, and never looked back. She’s been taking advantage of every playwriting workshop, class, conference, conversation and learning opportunity she could find ever since. She received a 2020 Oregon Literary Fellowship, a 2020 Oregon Arts Commission Career Opportunity Grant, and had more than 50 productions in 2019, across the U.S., U.K., Canada, the Middle East and Asia, with recent invitations to develop work at the William Inge Theatre Festival (2018), the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Playwriting Intensive (2019), the Midwestern Dramatists Center Conference (2018 & 2019), the Mid-America Theater Conference (2019 & 2020), the American Association for Theatre in Higher Education New Play Development Series (2019), the Sewanee Writers’ Conference (2019), the Ivoryton Playhouse Women Playwrights Initiative (2019), the Parson’s Nose Theatre’s Women Playwright Series (Winter and Fall, 2019), the Cambridge U.K. WriteON Festival (2019) and the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival (2019), the Lighthouse Writers Conference (2020) and the Great Plains Theatre Conference (postponed to 2021). Rachael’s plays are seen in many literary journals, including The Coachella Review, the Silk Road Review, Cascadia Rising Review, Some Scripts Literary Review, Feels Blind Literary, the StoneCoast Review, and more. Rachael is a semi-finalist for the 2019 New Dramatists Princess Grace Award, the 2020 O’Neill Theatre Conference, and the PlayMakers Repertory’s 2020 International Thomas Wolfe Playwriting Award. Rachael enjoys volunteering as the Dramatists Guild Rep for Oregon, and is an active member of the League of Professional Women in Theatre, and is excited about her new role as the New Writing Development Group Coordinator, for the KDC Theatre, in London. Rachael is the founder and editor of Code Red Playwrights, a consortium of writers across the country responding to gun violence, and she’is grateful to her playwright mentors, near and far, who continue to encourage and inspire her.

Regional Rep: Portland/Oregon

It’s a thrill to represent Oregon dramatists as your new Regional Representative. First, I want to express my gratitude to Francesca Piantadosi for her enthusiastic leadership in our state for these past eight years. In a recent chat, Francesca shared with me her ideas and reflections on serving Oregon dramatists, and I know we raise a collective toast to her. Thank you!

Now I’m excited to roll up my sleeves. This is an interesting time, with limits on gathering in-person, but with collaboration across time zones and geographic space seemingly boundless. Although we can’t easily grab that quick coffee or meet up for a drink before a show – we can meet on Zoom! — and we can build professional relationships and develop our craft.

I’d welcome the opportunity to hear from you, and have created a quick survey in order to ascertain what’s most important to you, as Oregon dramatists, moving forward. Please take a moment to let me know what your interests and priorities are, so we can work together to timeline events and activities that are aligned with your needs and the needs of your region.

And please connect with us on FaceBook - Oregon Region!