William Fowkes is a playwright and fiction writer living in New York. A member of the Dramatists Guild of America, Inc. as well as the River Writers Group of Manhattan, he is the author of numerous short stories, novels, short plays, and full-length plays. His work has appeared in Eureka Literary Magazine, The Nassau Review, The Distillery, The Dirty Goat, Buffalo Carp: Quad Cities Arts’ Journal, Queer Ramblings Magazine, and Lynx Eye, at the Edinburgh International Internet Festival, and elsewhere--and is forthcoming in The Chariton Review and Soundings East.

His first play, The Session, was a finalist in the Strawberry One-Act Festival Winter 2005 at the Bernie West Theater in Manhattan (and was published in The Distillery, January 2007). His second play, The Dakota, received a Best Short Play Award at the Downtown Urban Theater Festival 2005 at the Cherry Lane Theatre in June 2005 and was presented at Octoberfest 2005 at the Ensemble Studio Theatre. A staged reading of The Next Move (one-act) was presented at Octoberfest 2006 at EST. His first full-length play, Couple of the Century, was named semi-finalist in the Open Book's 8th Annual Theatre Readers Playwrighting Competition and will be presented at The Downtown Urban Theater Festival at the Cherry Lane Theatre June 2008. His newest full-length play, The German Lesson, was a runner-up for the 2008 Robert J. Pickering Award for Playwrighting Excellence and was recently presented in a reading at the Dramatists Guild.

A graduate of Yale University (BA, magna cum laude) and Northwestern University (MA, PhD), he is also the author of the book, A Hegelian Account of Contemporary Art and several articles on philosophy and aesthetics. He began his professional life as a professor of philosophy and aesthetics, teaching at Hobart & William Smith Colleges and Northwestern University. He has twice been the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities: at Brown University (Semiotics) and New York University (Business).

Since leaving academia, he has held a variety of marketing, communication, and strategic planning positions at Time Magazine, HBO, CBS, and Showtime Networks. He is currently VP of Trade Marketing at Showtime. A resident of the Upper West Side of Manhattan, he is also a pianist, singer, photographer, urban gardener, meditator, and the proud father of two daughters.

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William Fowkes, Playwright & Author