Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig is an internationally produced playwright whose trilogy The China Plays: Three Parables of Global Capital was recently published by Methuen Drama. The plays in the trilogy, The World of Extreme Happiness, The King of Hell's Palace, and Snow in Midusummer, have been produced in the U.K. at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Hampstead Theatre and the National Theatre, and in the U.S. at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Manhattan Theater Club, Classic Stage and the Goodman Theatre. Her audio musical Last Words of Uncle Dirt was produced by Playwrights Horizons and is a collaboration with composer Michael Roth.
Her body of work has been honored with the Whiting Award, the Wasserstein Prize, the Yale Drama Series Award (selected by David Hare), an Edinburgh Fringe First Award, the Keene Prize for Literature, and a United States Artist Fellowship. She has taught at Bennington College, and was formerly an Associate Professor of Drama at UC Santa Barbara.
Frances was born in Philadelphia, and raised in Northern Virginia, Okinawa, Taipei and Beijing. She received an MFA in Writing from the James A. Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin, a BA in Sociology from Brown University, and a certificate in Ensemble-Based Physical Theatre from the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre.
She is currently working on new play commissions for Yale Rep, Haiyuza Theatre, Upstart Crow Collective, and Interlochen Academy. Her latest play, The Unsinkable, will receive its world premiere production in February 2027 at PAC NYC in a production directed by Aya Ogawa.
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