Cheryl L. West

Cheryl L. West's plays include: Something Happened in Our Town, Last Stop on Market Street, Akeelah & the Bee, Mwindo, Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, Addy: American Girl Story, and Pullman Porter Blues. Her plays have been seen in England, Off-Broadway, on Broadway (Play On!)and in numerous regional theaters around the country. She has written TV and film projects at Disney, Paramount, MTV Films, Showtime, TNT, HBO, CBS and is the Webby-nominated writer for the original web series Diary of a Single Mom. Ms. West is the recipient of several awards: American Alliance For Theatre & Education (AATE) Distinguished Play Award (2016), the 2016 Charlotte B. Chorpenning Playwright Award, the Helen Hayes/Charles McArthur award for outstanding new play, the Susan Smith Blackburn prize, an international playwriting award for distinguished new plays, the National Endowment Playwriting Award and the Beverly Hills/Hollywood NAACP Best Playwright Award.

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Throughout her decades-long career and 20 full-length plays (and counting), the Seattle-based artist has embraced complex characters, celebrated the power of intergenerational stories and honored the rhythm, music and poetry of the African American vernacular.

- Black Arts Legacies

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Cheryl L. West writes plays that often trump those of master playwright August Wilson - not only meticulous neo-realist slices of African-American life, but dense, ethereal explorations of language and the inner regions of her character's souls. They are vigorously expressionistic, and yet remain grounded, entertaining theater.

- The L Magazine