Vera Starbard (Tlingit/Dena'ina) is the resident playwright at Perseverance Theatre, editor of First Alaskans Magazine, and writer for the PBS Kids animated series Molly of Denali.
Vera Starbard, T’set Kwei, is a Tlingit and Dena’ina writer and editor. She is Playwright-in-Residence at Perseverance Theatre through the Andrew W. Mellon National Playwright Residency Program and Editor of First Alaskans Magazine. Vera is also a writer for the PBS Kids children’s program “Molly of Denali,” which won a Peabody Award in 2020.
She has won numerous local, statewide and national individual writing and editing awards, including the Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Award and Alaska Literary Award. Vera currently serves on the HowlRound Advisory Council, and Kachemak Bay Writer's Conference Board, as well as serving as a founding member of Alaska Native playwright group Dark Winter Productions.
Her full-length play “Our Voices Will Be Heard” premiered at Perseverance Theatre in 2016, and was then published in the textbook “Contemporary Plays by Women of Color” in 2017, and turned into a one-hour radio adaptation that aired nationwide in 2018.
Vera lives with her husband Joe Bedard (Inupiaq/Yup’ik/Cree) on Dena'ina land - now called Anchorage, Alaska.
T’set Kwei yóo xát duwasáakw. Yeil áyá xát. T’eeneidi naax xát sitee. Craig kwáandáx áyá xát. T’akdeintaan yádi áyá xát.
