Ellen Margaret Lewis

Biography

E. M. Lewis is an award-winning playwright, lyricist, book writer, and opera librettist. Her work has been produced around the world, and published by Samuel French. Lewis received the Steinberg Award for How the Light Gets In and Song of Extinction and the Primus Prize for Heads from the American Theater Critics Association, the Ted Schmitt Award from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, a playwriting fellowship from New Jersey State Arts Commission, the 2016 Oregon Literary Fellowship in Drama, and an Edgerton Award for Magellanica. Other plays include Apple Season (National New Play Network rolling world premiere), The Gun Show (Edinburgh Fringe), Dorothy’s Dictionary, and You Can See All the Stars (Kennedy Center commission). Operas include Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Fallen Giant with composer Evan Meier, and Town Hall with composer Theo Popov. Lewis is currently a Mellon Foundation National Playwright in Residence at Artists Repertory Theater (ART). She is working on a big political play co-commissioned by ART and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for the American Revolutions program -- and on her first musical, with composer Roscoe McDonald. Lewis is a member of LineStorm Playwrights and the Dramatists Guild. She lives on her family’s farm in Oregon.