Jen Silverman is an American playwright, TV writer, poet, and novelist. Silverman's work frequently explores legacies of power and violence, how individuals navigate complex dynamics and social contracts in community, and how people seek to transform by rewriting their personal, familial, or political histories. Silverman works across a wide range of genres and styles, with some plays operating within the rules of absurdism and others working inside realism. As a queer person themself, Silverman frequently writes about sexuality and gender expression in their works. They have spoken openly about how their investment in creating rich nuanced characters, many of whom are queer and female, but whose queerness or gender are not solely representational aspects.
Silverman has many accolades from their published works including: Yale Drama Series Award,
Life
Jen Silverman grew up living and traveling in Scandinavia, Asia, and Europe as well as the United States.
They were born in the US, but moved to Japan at a very young age. In their first 13 years of life they lived in a number of countries, among them the US, France, Japan, Finland, Sweden, Italy, New Zealand, and Canada. They attribute some of their thematic interests to their lived experience of frequently being an outsider to a place or culture, and navigating complex questions of cultural rules and expectations in each new place.
Silverman has personally identified themself as genderqueer and uses they/them pronouns.
Education
Silverman completed a BA in comparative literature at
Brown University,
an MFA in playwriting at the University of Iowa, and an Artist Diploma at Juilliard working under
Marsha Norman and Chris Durang.
Career
Silverman has written a number of plays and has written for TV and film, including Netflix's
Tales of the City and
Tokyo Vice on which they are also a producer.
Silverman has published essays on the relationship between art and morality in
The New York Times and
Vogue.
Silverman made their Broadway debut as a playwright in the fall of 2024 with their play
The Roommate at the
Booth Theatre, starring
Mia Farrow and
Patti Lupone.
[ The Roommate Official Siteaccessed 06/30/2024]
Silverman has also authored multiple books. They have written The Island Dwellers, an interlinked story collection published by Random House, and the novels We Play Ourselves and There's Going to Be Trouble.
They have taught theatre and playwriting classes at the University of Iowa, Playwrights Horizons Theater School at New York University,
In 2016 they were awarded the Playwrights of New York Fellowship, an award that gives $100,000 of support to the recipient and covers housing expenses for a year. This allowed Silverman to quit their day job teaching and focus on writing full-time.
Works
Full-length plays
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Phoebe In Winter (2013)
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Still (2013)
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Pirates of the Cafeteria (2014)
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The Roommate (2015)
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The Moors (2016)
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Collective Rage: A Play In 5 Betties; In Essence, A Queer And Occasionally Hazardous Exploration; Do You Remember When You Were In Middle School And You Read About Shackleton And How He Explored The Antarctic?; Imagine The Antarctic As A Pussy And It’s Sort Of Like That (2016)
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Witch (2018)
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Wink (2019)
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Spain (2023)
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Highway Patrol (2024)
Short plays
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The Astonishing and Dangerous History of Mazefield the Frog (2015)
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Hippos of the Eastern Enclosure(2017)
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The Visitations (2020)
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Real American Dinner Party (2020)
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Ubu Anew (A Play for Strange People) (2021)
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Your Mother in the Night Sky (2021)
Books
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The Island Dwellers: Stories (2018)
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We Play Ourselves: A Novel (2021)
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Bath: A Poetry Chapboook (2021)
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There's Going to Be Trouble: A Novel (2024)
Awards
Silverman has received the Yale Drama Series Award,
Lilly Award, the Helen Merrill Fund Award in 2015,
the PoNY Fellowship (2016-2017),
and has received the MacDowell Fellowship three times.
Recent honors include fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim.
The American Library in Paris welcomed Jen Silverman for a virtual discussion of their novel,
There's Going to be Trouble, in June of 2024 as a Scholar of Note.
The OSCAR® qualifying short film Troy, which they wrote, screened at 70 festivals internationally, including Cannes and Sundance (where it was nominated for Best Short Film). It won Best Comedy at the Aspen Shortsfest, and Best Narrative Short at the L.A. Outfest
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