Naomi Wallace

Naomi Wallace studied at University of Iowa and Hampshire College. The recorded working language is English. Residence is recorded at Yorkshire Dales and Kentucky. Distinctions recorded are MacArthur Fellows Program, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Obie Award and Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes.

• Name — Naomi Wallace • Born — 1960 • Birthplace — Prospect, Kentucky, U.S. • Occupation — Playwright and screenwriter • Education — Hampshire College (BA) University of Iowa (MFA) • Partner — Bruce McLeod • Children — 3 • Awards — Notable awards include the MacArthur Fellowship & Obie Award • Website — naomiwallace.com • Notable Works — One Flea Spare

Naomi Wallace was born in Prospect, Kentucky, to Henry F. Wallace, a farmer, photojournalist and correspondent for Time and Life magazines, and Sonja de Vries, a Dutch justice and human rights worker. Wallace obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hampshire College. She then received two master's degrees from the University of Iowa. Currently, she divides her time between Kentucky and the Yorkshire Dales in Northern England (UK), where she lives with her partner, Bruce McLeod. Wallace has taught English literature, poetry and play writing at Yale University, UCLA, Illinois State University, Merrimack College, American University of Cairo, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and other institutions. In 2024 Wallace lectured at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She has been called "a dedicated advocate for justice and human rights in the U.S. and abroad, and Palestinian rights in the Middle East," and her writing described as "muscular, devastating, and unwavering". American Theater writes of her work, “Naomi Wallace speaks to, and for, the body as eloquently as any American writer since Walt Whitman.”

In the mid-2000s, Wallace was briefly detained by the United States Department of Homeland Security after defying the ban on travel to Cuba. In August 2016, Wallace was one of the Freedom Riders with the Women's Boat to Gaza. She has also worked with women in the criminal justice system, and is a member of Showing up for Racial Justice. Wallace is a member of Jewish Voice for Peace.

• Illustration — Jeremy Scahill and Naomi Wallace giving a writing workshop in New Haven, Connecticut.

• In The Heart of America • One Flea Spare • The Inland Sea • Slaughter City • The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek • The Girl Who Fell Through a Hole in Her Jumper (with Bruce E. J. McLeod; licensed under the title The Girl Who Fell Through a Hole in Her Sweater in the United States) • The War Boys • Things of Dry Hours • Birdy (an adaptation of William Wharton's novel) • The Fever Chart: Three Visions of the Middle East • Twenty One Positions: A Cartographic Dream of the Middle East (with Lisa Schlesinger and Abdelfattah Abusrour) • The Hard Weather Boating Party • One Short Sleepe • And I and Silence • The Liquid Plain • Night is a Room • Barrel Wave • The Return of Benjamin Lay (produced at the Finborough Theatre with Marcus Rediker) • The Breach • Returning to Haifa (with Ismail Khalidi (writer)) • Guernica, Gaza (with Ismail Khalidi (writer))

• Inside/Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora • Double Exposure: Plays of the Jewish and Palestinian Diasporas

• "Trump-ocalypse Now? Theater in the Age of Trump" • "Radical Vision and Form" (interview) • "Let the Right One In: On resistance, hospitality and new writing for the American stage"

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• "In the Fields of Aceldama" in Best of The Fest, ed. Phil Setren. 1998, Aurora Metro Books.