Melvin Ningyao Yen (all pronouns) is a Taiwan-born theatre playwright, producer, and critic based in New York. A cohort member of the BIPOC Critics Lab at The Public Theater, they work across performance, photography, and dramaturgical research, often informed by Buddhist philosophies of impermanence. They have held fellowships at Lincoln Center, Playwrights Horizons, and Manhattan Theatre Club. Selected works include the musical Awake and the plays The Flight of Impermanence, Bodega Cat, Breakfast, and Waning Moon. Their writing appears on Substack, The Ritual of Seeing.