John J. Caswell Jr.

John J. Caswell, Jr. is a queer, Mexican-American playwright originally from Phoenix, a current Lila Acheson Wallace American playwrighting fellow at The Juilliard School, and the winner of the 2020-2021 Paula Vogel Playwriting Award at the Vineyard Theatre.

Additional honors include the 2020 Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award, 2019 Relentless Award Finalist for Wet Brain, 2018 MacDowell Fellowship, 2018 SPACE on Ryder Farm Creative Residency, Play Group member at Ars Nova, and the 2017 Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship. He is currently under commission at Playwrights Horizons.

His work is cited frequently as an example of queer-themed theatre, most recently referenced in articles appearing in Theatre Topics, The International Journal of the Creative Arts in Interdisciplinary Practice, and the European Journal of Comparative American Studies.

Included as a consummate demonstration of auto-ethnographic theatre, his play SHOTS: A Love Story was published as part of Johnny Saldaña's book Ethnotheatre: Research From Page to Stage published by Left Coast Press.

Education: Artist Diploma, The Juilliard School (in process). MFA, Hunter College. BA, Arizona State University.