Susan Yankowitz is a playwright, librettist, novelist and screenwriter. During 1968-69, she began her career as a playwright with The Open Theater, led by Joseph Chaikin, and wrote TERMINAL, a groundbreaking collaborative play about human mortality for which she received the 1970 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Playwright. Years later, with Chaikin, performers from the original production, and others of a younger generation, she revised the piece into 1969TERMINAL1996 for a revival at Performance Space 122. Her other Off-Broadway credits include SLAUGHTERHOUSE PLAY (1971) at the Public Theater, NIGHT SKY (1991) produced by the Women’s Project & Productions, and PHAEDRA IN DELIRIUM (1998), CSC/ Women’s Project Theater. 

Susan Yankowitz was born in Newark, New Jersey. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the Yale School of Drama. Her other plays include A Knife in the Heart (2002) at Sledgehammer Theatre, Under the Skin (2007), (formerly titled Foreign Bodies), Seven (2008), a documentary play in collaboration with six other women playwrights, The Tragical-Farcical Trial of Madame P and Other 4-Legged and Winged Creatures (2016), Her work as a librettist/lyricist includes helping to develop the musical Baby (1983), True Romances (1977) with music by Elmer Bernstein; the opera Slain in the Spirit: The Promise of Jim Jones (1996) with music by Taj Mahal; Chéri (2005) with music by Michael Dellaira; and Thumbprint (2014) with Kamala Sankaram, which premiered at the Prototype Festival and had a production at the L.A. Opera in June 2017. “Silent Witness,” her first novel, was published in 1976 and her documentary about Sylvia Plath aired on PBS in 1990. Her work has been translated into 31 languages and her archive is held at Kent State University.