Velina Hasu Houston

Velina Hasu Houston’s literary career began Off-Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club, expanding globally. A playwright and musical theatre/opera librettist, she also is an essayist, published poet, screenwriter, novelist, and journalist with over 30 writing commissions. Honored by several organizations such as the Kennedy Center, Rockefeller Foundation, Japan Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Theatre Communications Group, and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, she founded graduate playwriting studies at the School of Dramatic Arts, University of Southern California, and directed dramatic writing studies there for 31 years. At USC, she is a presidentially appointed Distinguished Professor of Theatre, USC Resident Playwright and USC Iovine Young Academy faculty. For six years, she served on the U.S. Department of State's U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange and the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission. A Fulbright Scholar, her archives are at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California. She has lectured or participated in research symposia at key universities in Japan: Aoyama Gakuin University, Osaka University, Kyoto University, Doshisha University and Keio University. She is a member of the Dramatists’ Guild, Writers’ Guild of America-West, Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights, League of Professional Theatre Women, and the International Centre for Women Playwrights. She is Writers’ Odyssey Associate Artist at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, Los Angeles, and affiliated with New Circle Theatre Company, New York. 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: https://www.velinahasuhouston.com/
IG: @gyokurogirl

MORE ABOUT ME
If you could bring one change to theater, what would it be? If I could bring one change to theatre, I would summon a greater breadth for it with regards to the inclusion of female voices, female voices of color, and voices of writers over the age of fifty.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
Several film and theatre projects.

KEYWORDS
​Immigrant, migrant, polycultural, mixed race, polytheism, sociopolitical, equality, queer, historical, musical