Hannah Manikowski is a Georgia-born, Los Angeles-based writer who holds a BFA in Directing from the School of Drama at Carnegie Mellon University. Across mediums, Hannah's primary point of investment as a steward for stories is excavating the mundane within the magical and the magical within the mundane. As a playwright, among other honors, Hannah has been named a 2020 O'Neill finalist and the winner of the 2018 - 2019 Judith Barlow Prize. She's also a proud alumna of The 24 Hour Plays: Nationals and the inaugural Tepper Semester Playwriting Program, where she studied under Broadway-produced playwright Antoinette Nwandu. Her play, 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, recently received its professional world premiere in 2021 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." You can read her plays on NPX.

 

In addition to theatre, Hannah holds a deep love for the rich narrative potential present in both podcasts and gaming. She works as the Associate Producer of Writing within Blizzard Entertainment's Story and Franchise Development department, where she has the privilege of providing cross-team support to all writing projects in the pipeline. She invites you to check out her own work as a podcaster and game creator as well!

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. Alongside building imaginative new worlds, Hannah rescues homeless bunny rabbits as a senior volunteer with Bunny World Foundation in Los Angeles. Her story of how she adopted her 10-pound lab rabbit, Mini, was selected as a 2022 grant winner by the Petco Love Foundation, and is available to read here. Feel free to ask her about it the next time you approach her with a cool new project!