Phanésia Pharel2025-27 Playwriting Fellow

Phanésia Pharel is a Haitian-American playwright & screenwriter from a dragon fruit farm in Miami. The daughter of an immigrant teacher and farmer, she writes to honor people.

Her full-length plays include Dead Girl’s Quinceañera, The Waterfall, Black Girl Joy, and Refuse It: A Black Woman’s Guide To 21st Century Rage. Her plays have been developed at the New Harmony Project, Playwrights' Center, New York Stage and Film, SolFest, Thrown Stone, Shattered Globe, and Echo Theater Company. She has received commissions from the Atlantic Theater, Lucille Lortel (Alcove), La Jolla Playhouse, Miranda Family Fund, Hero Theatre, City Theatre Miami, and the Latinx Playwrights Circle.

Phanésia is a member of the Obie-winning EST/Youngblood group and The Wish Collective. As a screenwriter, she is a member of Lena Waithe’s Hillman Grad Screenwriting Lab. Her honors include The Kilroys Web, five awards from the Kennedy Center, and recognition as a two-time Bay Area Playwrights Festival Finalist/Honorable Mention. She is a Jane Chambers Finalist, an A is For Playwriting Award recipient and a finalist for the Frank Moffett Mosier Fellowship for Works in Heightened Language.

She will be in residence at the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference in Summer 2025 for her play Dead Girl’s Quinceañera. She is the incoming Playwriting Fellow (2025-2027) at Emory University, where she will teach and have a new play produced by their repertory company. 

She holds a B.A. in Urban Studies from Barnard College of Columbia University and an MFA in Playwriting from the University of California San Diego.