Lauren Whitehead is a writer, performer and dramaturg. She writes in several forms including poetry, nonfiction, adaptations and drama. Her poems have been published in online and print magazines including POETRY, Apogee Journal and Winter Tangerine, as well as in selected anthologies such as Break Beat Poets, Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic. Last year, a poem in dedication to her grandfather who was a barber and a sharecropper was featured on The Slow Down with former Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith. In 2018, Whitehead adapted the text of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ award winning memoir, Between the World and Me for staging at the Apollo Theater, the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts and for the TV adaptation on HBO. In her most recent performance, Whitehead originated the lead role of “Un/Sung” in the opera We Shall Not Be Moved, which she performed at the Wilma Theater, the Apollo Theater and at the Stadsschouwburg Theater in Amsterdam (Dir. Bill T. Jones). Whitehead has been a Sundance Theater Lab Fellow, a Sundance Talent Forum Fellow and she has worked as a dramaturg at The Public Theater, Hedgebrook and at The Denver Center for Performing Arts. Currently, Whitehead is an Assistant Arts Professor of Drama at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.