Kelly Younger, associate professor: B.A., Loyola Marymount University; M.A., Loyola University, Chicago; M.A. and Ph.D., Drama Studies, National University of Ireland, University College Dublin.

• Phone: 310-338-1927
• Email: kyounger@lmu.edu
• Website: www.kellyyounger.net

Kelly Younger leads workshops in play writing and teaches courses in modern and contemporary drama, Irish drama, classical drama in translation, performance studies, and theory. Edwin Mellen Press published his book Irish Adaptations of Greek Tragedies: Dionysus in Ireland in 2001. He edited over 1000 pages of diary entries, letters, and photographs of a WWII film projectionist in the Army Air Force First Motion Picture Unit that is housed in the Special Collections at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Other publications include articles on Seamus Heaney, Anton Chekhov, Harold Pinter, Louis MacNeice, and Brendan Kennelly, with recent conference presentations at Columbia University, New York University, and University College Dublin.

Younger is also an award-winning playwright with work staged off-Broadway, in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, throughout the Midwest and South, as well as in Canada, England, and Ireland.  He is a member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre/LA Playwrights Unit, the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights, The Dramatists Guild of America, and is a voting member for the LA Stage Alliance Ovation Awards.

Currently, Younger is developing a new full-length play called Rorschach about the famous inkblot test.  In addition, Younger has been commissioned by New York's Irish Repertory Theatre to adapt the novel Banished Children of Eve by Peter Quinn.

Select works include: I Think You Think I Love You (Playscripts; Smith and Kraus anthology Best PLays of 2005); Forgive me, Father (JAC publishing); Lady Gregory's Ingredients (JAC publishing), winner of the Ireland National Lady Gregory Playwriting Award; Off Compass, winner of the 2007 John Gassner New Play Award through SUNY Stony Brook; Once a Marine; Epiphany Cake; and Why Wyoming, Critics' Choice Samuel French off-Broadway Festival.

Several Monologues from Younger's plays appear in various anthologies including Audition Arsenal (Smith and Kraus) and Actor's Choice (Playscripts), and an excerpt of Younger's translation of Trojan Women appears in Beth Henley's play Revelers (Dramatists Play Service).