a.k. payne

a.k. payne (they/she) is a playwright, artist-theorist, and theatremaker with roots in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – and the winner of the 2025 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for her play Furlough’s Paradise. Their plays love on and engage the interdependencies of Black pasts, presents and futures and seek to find/remember language that might move us towards our collective liberation(s). They hold a B.A. in English and African-American Studies from Yale College and an MFA in Playwriting under Tarell Alvin McCraney from fka Yale School of Drama. A 2023-2024 Van Lier New Voices Fellow, their work has been a finalist for the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award and a 3x finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the largest international prize for women+ playwrights. Their work has been developed with the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, The New Harmony Project, Great Plains Theater Conference, and Manhattan Theater Club’s Groundworks Lab.