Kia Cothron is an American playwright, activist, and television writer who has written a number of plays for theatre including Splash Hatch on the E Going Down (Center Stage, Yale Repository Theatre, New York Stage and Film, USA, Donmar Warehouse); Digging Eleven (Hartford Stage Company, USA); Seeking the Genesis (Goodman Theatre, Chicago, Manhattan Theater Club, New York); Life by Asphyxiation (Playwright's Horizons, USA); Wake Up Lou Rise (Delaware Theatre Company); Come Down Burning (Long Wharf Theatre, American Place Theatre, USA). She has won many awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts residency with Manhattan Theatre Club, the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays for Seeking the Genesis, Young Playwrights Inc's Joe A. Callaway Playwriting award for Come Down Burning, Delaware Theatre Company's First Connections Contest for Wake Up Lou Riser, New Professional Theater Playwriting Award for Cage Rhythm, a Van Lier Fellowship and a New Dramatists membership.