Daniel Olivas is an award-winning author of 13 books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. His first full-length play, Waiting for Godínez, will be published by the University of New Mexico Press in 2025, had its world premiere with Teatro Espejo (Sacramento, CA) in 2024 after being selected for the Playwrights' Arena's Summer Reading Series (2020), The Road Theatre's Twelfth Annual Summer Playwrights Festival (2021), the Garry Marshall Theatre's New Works Festival (2022), and the Instituto Arte Teatral Internacional (IATI). It was also a semi-finalist for the American Blues Theater's 2021 Blue Ink Playwriting Award. A shorter, pandemic version of Waiting for Godínez had its world premiere with Playwrights' Arena in 2021, under the title Waiting. Olivas was selected for Circle X Theatre's inaugural Evolving Playwrights Group to write a new play, The Book of Want, for a reading in 2021. He received his degree in English literature from Stanford University, and law degree from UCLA. By day, Olivas is an attorney and makes his home in Southern California with his wife. He discusses the writing of his first full-length play in the essay, "From Dystopia to Absurdity: On Being a Chicano Writer in the Age of Trump" (Los Angeles Review of Books).