France-Luce Benson

Content Writer

France-Luce Benson’s plays have been produced by Crossroads Theatre Company, The Fire This Time Festival, New Perspectives Theatre, JACK, Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre, Harlem9, the Billie Holiday Theatre, and the Ensemble Studio Theatre where she is an honored Lifetime Member. She graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with an M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing, and has also studied at Columbia University/Harlem Arts Alliance, Circle Repertory Theatre School, and Florida International University. Her screenplay, Healing Roots, won the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan screenplay competition(10K prize), and the Sloan Foundation in association with Ensemble Studio Theatre also awarded Ms. Benson a New Play Commission to write The Devil’s Salt, a full length play about Haitian activist Jean Dominique; which was featured at EST’s First Light Festival 2013.  She is a two time Schubert Fellow, as well as a three time scholarship recipient at the Upright Citizens Brigade. She is the writer and producer of the short,“Black Baby Agency”, which she developed with UCB.   Ms. Benson is also an Associate Professor at St. Johns University, a proud member of the Dramatist Guild of America, and New York Women in Film and Television.  Fati’s Last Dance was honored by the Kennedy Center (Lorraine Hansberry Award), and won the Mary Marlin Fisher Prize from Carnegie Mellon University. Most recently, she was named a Finalist for the Women’s Project Playwrights Lab. She is currently working on a new play tentatively titled “The Deportation Chronicles”, commissioned in association with ACLU, and based on the true stories of hundreds of American Immigrants unjustly detained and deported.