Illustration by Kathryn Rathke for “Going Up” in City Arts Magazine, June 2018.

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Seayoung (SHEE young) is a playwright and educator from Seattle based in the East Coast. Her play Jar of Fat (Brown University) won the 2022 Yale Drama Series Prize and second place for the Paul Stephen Lim Playwriting Award at The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF).  She is a current member of Ma-Yi Writers Lab. Other awards/honors include a writer residency at Hedgebrook, Stephen Sondheim Graduate Fellowship in Theater Arts at Brown University, finalist for Playwrights Realm Scratchpad Series, a Playwriting Fellowship at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the People’s Choice Award for Outstanding New Play at Theater Puget Sound’s Gregory Awards and Seattle’s Rose Lee Award for Excellence in Local Playwriting. 

Her plays Persimmon Nights (Cafe Nordo) and Do It For Umma (Annex Theatre) directed by Sara Porkalob both enjoyed sold-out runs. Other plays have developed/supported  by Annex Theater, Cafe Nordo, Clubbed Thumb, Seattle Public Theater’s Education Program, The Horse in Motion, Theatre Battery, Pony World Theatre, Mirror Stage, Live Girls! Theater, UW School of Drama, Brown University, The 14/48 Projects, SIS Productions, Pork Filled Productions, The Umbrella Project Theater Off Jackson, and the Seattle Fringe Festival.

She has taught Playwriting I-II and Beginning Screenwriting at Brown University and will teach Playwriting at the Rhode Island School of Design in Fall 2023. 

In addition to theater, Seayoung has been involved with social and racial justice community organizations such as the MomsRising, Children’s Alliance, Asian Pacific Islander Community Leadership Foundation, the International Examiner, and Social Justice Fund Northwest.

BA: University of Washington. MFA: Brown University.