Kari Bentley-Quinn

Kari Bentley-Quinn lives in New York City, originally from the little coast town of Stratford, CT. Her plays have been presented at or developed with Lark Play Development Center, Lesser America, The Brick Theater, The Secret Theatre, The One Minute Play Festival, Pace University, Caps Lock Theater, Effable Arts, NYMadness, Team Awesome Robot, Packawallop Productions, Artemisia Theater, and more.

Kari’s full length plays include The Permanent Night (2008 FringeNYC award winner); Paper Cranes (Backstage Critic’s Pick); The Unlikely Ascent of Sybil Stevens (Bay Area Playwrights Festival Finalist); The Ocean Thought Nothing (2014 O’Neill Conference Finalist); Prepared (Kilroy’s List Honorable Mention); The Worst Mother in The World (Leah Ryan FEWW Prize Finalist); and Wendy and the Neckbeards (The Relentless Award Honorable Mention).

Kari is a co-founder of Mission to (dit)Mars, a theater company based in Queens, New York City. As part of the company, Kari is a leader of the Propulsion Lab, a bi-weekly writers group that supports emerging playwrights, as well as the Launch Pad Reading Series, which gives plays written in the lab their first public readings. Alongside her fellow co-founders, Kari has facilitated the development of more than 30 new plays, many of which have been produced all over the country as well as internationally.

Kari has been a finalist for the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Leah Ryan FEWW Prize, The Playwrights Realm, and the Public Theater Emerging Writers Group, and was a nominee for the Doric Wilson Playwriting Award. Kari was the winner of the Rita and Burton Goldberg Award at Hunter College, where she got her MFA under Tina Howe, Mark Bly, and Arthur Kopit.