Jessica Renee Huang writes plays cross-legged on the kitchen floor, often wearing one sock and chewing her cuticles. She and her laptop have survived higher education at the University of Missouri, a melodramatic stint in Phoenix and now write together in assorted Minneapolis diners and bars. Jessica used 10 of her 15 minutes on her short play Mermaids, which won the regional KCACTF ten-minute play award and was performed at the Kennedy Center at the national festival. Mermaids manifested most recently at 2G's Free Range festival in New York City, now a creature of its own free will. Jessica co-founded the Unit Collective to contend with her multi-cultural confusion; she is a Many Voices Fellow and punch-pleased to call the Playwrights' Center home.

Andrea Jenkins, author of two chapbooks, tributaries: poems celebrating black history and Pieces of A Scream, is a poet, spoken word and performance artist. Winner of the 2010 Naked Stages and Verve Grant(s), she co-curates the Queer Voices, one of the longest running LGBT reading series in the country. Most recently she was published in the anthology Gender Outlaws II: The Next Generation.

Janaki Ranpura of J-J Trinket's has been staging puppet pieces since graduating from Yale University in 1998. Her work combines physical theater dynamics as developed in Paris by Jacques Lecoq with light play based on Larry Reed's reinvention of Balinese wayang kulit. The pieces explore new relationships between shadow screen, audience, and actor.

She is currently working on the Operations Theater series, making puppet shows that explore medical history and health care. J-J Trinket’s Series is Janaki's production company. See more at web.mac.com/jjtrinket.

Jerrie Steele is a Minneapolis playwright, poet, songwriter and storyteller who creates literary and musical work from magical lucid dreams. She has been a supporting member of the Playwrights’ Center for over a decade. Her awards include the Playwright’s Center’s Waring Jones Commission, the Loft Literary Center’s Inroads for Emerging African American Writers, and two Minnesota State Arts Board Cultural Collaborations Grants to create new works for staged performance. Jerrie’s work has been supported by and showcased at Penumbra Theatre, SteppingStone Theatre, the Minnesota Fringe Festival, Red Eye Theatre, Nautilus Music Theatre and the Science Museum of Minnesota.