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 and is comprised of plays that have been staged in the United Kingdom at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Hampstead Theatre and the National Theatre, and in the United States 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.

Frances lives in the Berkshires, where she enjoys growing vegetables and dramatic worlds when she isn't teaching playwriting at Bennington College. She was formerly an Associate Professor of Drama at UC Santa Barbara, where she had the pleasure of mentoring undergraduate playwrights and directing the New Works Lab.

Her body of work has been honored with the Wasserstein Prize, the Yale Drama Series Award (selected by David Hare), an Edinburgh Fringe First Award, the David A. Callichio Award, the Keene Prize for Literature and a United States Artist Fellowship. She has received support from artist residencies at Yaddo, Macdowell, Hedgebrook, Ragdale, the Sundance Playwright Retreats at Ucross and Flying Point, and the Santa Fe Art Institute.

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.