Kristen Adele Calhoun is a writer, actor, producer and curator. She is the founding Program Director of ArtChangeUS and co-producer of InterFest, an intersectional arts and ideas festival that began at the Harlem School of the Arts. She is also the Assistant Editor of Contemporary Plays by Women of Color and is currently an I AM SOUL Playwriting Resident at Dr. Barbara Ann Teer’s National Black Theatre. Her writings are inspired by red clay roads, bloodline healing, joy, time travel, water, fugitivity, the transmutation of our world, and historic acts of uprising. Her plays include Now, She is Rising, Canfield Drive, A Pocket Full of Dandelions, Quilombo, With These Hands, and Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody. Her television and film acting credits include House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Elementary, The Sinner, Blue Bloods, The Good Wife, and Everything I Whispered to Dorothy. Off-Broadway & regional acting credits include Canfield Drive (St. Louis Black Rep); Jackie and Me (Denver Center); Skeleton Crew (Premiere Stages); A Raisin in the Sun (Clarence Brown Theatre); Myrna in Transit (Ensemble Studio Theatre); Clybourne Park (Geva Theatre & Cleveland Playhouse); and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (Shadow Theatre Co.)

A native of Dallas, Texas, she is a graduate of the University of North Texas (Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting) and the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University (Master of Fine Arts in Acting). Kristen currently splits her time between Ghana, Mexico and the United States of America.