a.k. payne (they&she) is a playwright, artist-theorist, and theatermaker with roots in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Their plays love on and engage the interdependencies of Black pasts, presents and futures and seek to find/remember language that might move us towards our collective liberation(s). They hold a B.A. in English and African-American Studies from Yale College and an MFA in Playwriting under Tarell Alvin McCraney from fka Yale School of Drama. 

Named one of Variety Magazine's Top Ten Storytellers to Watch, she is a 3x finalist and the 2025 winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the oldest and largest international prize honoring women+ playwrights. Their work has been developed and workshopped broadly including: at the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, The New Harmony Project and Breaking The Binary Theatre Festival. Her plays have been produced in theatres across the country in NYC (Off-Broadway), Atlanta (Alliance Theatre), Los Angeles (Geffen Playhouse) and beyond. They are currently a resident artist/fellow with National Black Theatre’s I AM SOUL Playwrights Residency and Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh Foundation) .

They are an alumna of an arts magnet public school; grandchild of the Great Migration; descendant of a music teacher and a carpenter, who both march every year with their unions in Pittsburgh’s Labor Day parade; a nb/genderqueer abolitionist who loves to swim & gather people; and of a great lineage of Black women storytellers and living-room archivists; all of which deeply informs, uplifts and amplifies their work as a playwright, community organizer and spacemaker.

Watercolor Painting by: Ali Dachis