Beth Kander is a USA Today best-selling author and longtime playwright with tangled roots in the Midwest and Deep South. She was in the inaugural cohort of the Dramatists Guild Foundation National Fellows (2024-2025) and previously served as a Mississippi Arts Commission Literary Fellow in Playwriting. Honors include two Henry Awards for Best New Play or Musical (Hazardous Materials, 2019; Mountain Octopus, 2023) and two Ashland New Plays Festival wins; she then served 6 seasons as ANPF’s Host Playwright. Her work has appeared in Oprah Daily, American Theatre, Writer’s Digest, Slackjaw, Frazzled, and elsewhere. Beth teaches in the MFA Creative Writing program at Mississippi University for Women but lives in Chicago with her favorite characters: her husband, two kids, and giant rescue dog.