Kathy Coudle-King

Born in West New York, NJ, Kathleen Coudle-King completed high school in Miami, Florida and graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with a degree in Dramatic Writing, later earning a M.A. in English from the Univ. of ND.

Kathleen has one foot in education and the other deeply submerged in theatre. She holds a B.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and an M.A. in English from the Univ. of North Dakota. She has been an indie theatre producer, an executive director for a community theatre, and is currently the managing artistic director for the Empire Theatre Co., as well as the founder of Theatre without Walls.

Kathleen has written more than 50 plays, enjoying productions around the U.S.  Her main focus is on social justice issues and women's role in history. Her plays have highlighted the early labor movement in NYC in the 1900s when women led work strikes and rent strikes. In St. Bette's, Kathleen wrote about a home for unwed mothers in the 1960s when young, pregnant women had few choices (history repeats itself). She has received multiple commissions to create pieces for college campuses about dating violence and domestic abuse, as well as conferences for plays about access to mental health care in rural communities, breast feeding, and children with siblings with disabilities.

Her play, Companeras, was the Larry Corse Int'l New Play winner, produced at Columbus State (GA) and the Hotchkiss School (CT) and focuses on women political prisoners in Uruguay during the 1970's "Dirty War."

For the last three years, Kathleen has been dedicated to telling the stories of homelessness and mental illness in her state of North Dakota. Through interviews, she created "In Search of Persephone," about a mother looking for her runaway trans-daughter who is found living on the streets. Her most recent play, "Retail Therapy," received grant support from the ND Council on the Arts and an American Recovery Grant for Artists. Research began with interviews with individuals who had been patients or

were the relatives of patients who spent time in psychiatric institutions.

Currently, Kathleen holds a writing fellowship from the ND Council on the Arts and is working on a play about the first patients at the ND State Hospital for the mentally ill in 1896. She is also a writing professor at the University of North Dakota, where she lives on the prairie with her family. Kathleen is a member of the Dramatist Guild.