Lydia Stryk was born in DeKalb, Illinois, birthplace of barbed wire. She grew up between DeKalb and London, England, and as a child also lived in Japan where she studied Kabuki and performed on the stage, and in Iran. She later trained to be an actress at the Drama Centre, London--a career she pursued in New York for exactly one year before going back to school to study history, education and later, journalism. She has a BA in History from Hunter College, an MA in Journalism from NYU and a Ph.D. in Theatre from the Graduate Centre of the City University of New York. Her dissertation, "Acting Hysteria: An Analysis of the Actress and her Part" was in part an attempt to understand why her own short-lived experience acting the woman's part on stage felt pathological. It was while interning at the weekly journal, The Nation, that she wrote a first play, coming full circle back to the theatre, but this time as a writer -- inspired by the feminist idea circulating at the time that women might have other stories to tell and other ways of telling them. She is the author of fifteen full-length plays and a few short ones, and the work has been anthologized in America and published by Broadway Play Publishing and translated into German by Per Lauke Verlag, Hamburg. Her plays have been seen at festivals around the United States and in Europe and produced at, among others, Denver Center Theatre, Perseverance Theatre, Alaska, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Victory Gardens, HB Studios, Diverse City Theater Company, Stageworks/Hudson, The Contemporary American Theatre Festival, and in Germany at Schauspiel Essen and Theaterhaus Stuttgart. Her play, American Tet was produced at English Theatre, Berlin, in November of 2008. She has been commissioned by Pittsburgh Public Theatre and Geva Theatre, Rochester and is the recipient of a Berrilla Kerr Playwright Award. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center. She lives between Berlin, Germany, and New York City, writing essays, plays, doing freelance editing and teaching writing workshops and theatre and speech-related courses. Most recently she became a gardener. Currently, she is at work on two new plays, Atlantis, and An Accident.

headshot photo: nancy barnicle