Donna Kaz

DONNA KAZ is a multi-genre writer who is also known as the Guerrilla Girl, “Aphra Behn.” She writes plays, prose, screenplays and creates performances which address gender parity, reproductive rights, violence against women and proves that feminists are funny at the same time. In the fall of 2016 she revealed the personal story she had kept hidden for 35 years – that as a young woman she had been trapped in a physically violent relationship with the actor William Hurt. Her memoir, “UN/MASKED, Memoirs of a Guerrilla Girl On Tour,” published by Skyhorse, was named best nonfiction prose book of 2017 by Devil’s Kitchen. Kaz has led the touring theatre company, Guerrilla Girls On Tour, since 2001 and the troupe has received the Yoko Ono Courage Award for the Arts, the Skowhegan medal, and was named “Notable Women in American Theatre” by the League of Professional Theatre Women and CUNY-TV. Donna Kaz is the recipient of Venus Theatre’s Lifetime Achievement Award, Jerry Kaufman Playwriting Award, Ian MacMillan Writing Award, Boundary Stone Screenwriting Award and residencies at Yaddo, Ucross, Djerassi, Blue Mountain, Wurlitzer, Mesa Refuge, Ragdale and Marble House. She is a 2023/24 Winterthur research fellow and is currently working on a trilogy of plays which examines the invisible thread that exists between humans and the natural world entitled “The Sweetgum Trilogy.” She has written for and been featured by media outlets including Variety, YOU, Ms. Magazine, Bitch Media, Bust, Stone Coast Review, Mother Jones, NPR, Alternet, Role Reboot, Trivia: Voices of Feminism, The Dramatist, Ful Art magazine, Cagibi, Girl Drive Blog, Lilith, The Sun, SHIFT, Gender Across Borders and Women in Hollywood. Her plays and performances have been produced at the New York Musical Theatre Festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Harlem Stage, Trinity College/Dublin, The Spit Lit Festival/London, International Women’s Arts Festival/UK, Women Playwrights International Conference/Sweden, City of Women Festival/Slovenia, Kultury w Poznaniu/Poland and Lincoln Center. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte and currently serves as the program director for All Write, Columbia, Writers Conference in Spencertown, NY as well as the Kaz Conference Writing Workshop. You can download her new eBook "Push/Pushback 9 Steps to Make a Difference with Activism and Art (because the world's gone bananas) at Guerrilla Girls On Tour.