Hannah Manikowski is a Georgia-born, nationally recognized storytelling artist who holds a BFA in Directing from the School of Drama at Carnegie Mellon University. The work Hannah creates focuses on digging into unexpected characters, reveling in moments of intimacy, and leaning into camp. She is a 2020 O'Neill finalist, the winner of the 2018 - 2019 Judith Barlow Prize, and is also a proud alumna of The 24 Hour Plays: Nationals, Horizon Theatre's Young Playwrights Festival, and the inaugural Tepper Semester Playwriting Program, where she studied under Antoinette Nwandu. In the past year, The Sunrise from the Moon has enjoyed readings/development through both San Francisco Playhouse and the MACH 33 Festival (a collaboration between Pasadena Playhouse and CalTech). Compensation, meanwhile, enjoyed its world premiere at Island City Stage in Florida. Critics called the script "effectively lacerating," hailing that "every emotion associated with pregnancy and pending parenthood is present in the 95 minutes of Hannah Manikowski’s smart and promising play."

 

Hannah has a special love for fiction podcasts, narrative design for video games, and ARG transmedia storytelling. Her own podcast, A Dyke and a Drag Queen Survive the End of Days, is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all other corners of the web where a fiction podcast might conceivably burrow itself and make a home. You can also read her plays on NPX.

If this were not evident from her photo at left (thanks, Tom's One Hour Photo!), Hannah takes herself significantly less seriously than she takes her career. She's basically a sentient Easter egg. And alongside building imaginative new worlds, Hannah also rescues homeless bunny rabbits, which is like, a whole thing. Feel free to ask her about it the next time you approach her with a cool new project!