Grace McLeod | Playwright

FANCY BIO

Grace McLeod (she/her/hers) is a queer playwright and screenwriter from New York City who is also proud to call Los Angeles home. Her full-length plays include HERLAND (2019 National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere), TABOO! (under option with No Guarantees Productions), THE COMMUNIST REVOLUTION: A NINTH-GRADE EUROPEAN HISTORY PROJECT (2020 Ashland New Plays Festival), and CLOSING COSTS (upcoming world premiere at Geffen Playhouse in 2027). Grace has had her plays produced, developed, and/or commissioned by The Playwrights Realm (2021 Virtual Realm Mentee, 2023 commission), IAMA Theatre Company (2025 Emerging Playwrights Lab), Chalk Repertory Theatre (2023 Writers Group), Redtwist Theatre (HERLAND), MOXIE Theatre (HERLAND), Greenway Court Theatre (HERLAND, IF I SHOULD WAKE), Goodman Theatre, Millikin University (2020 commission), Greenhouse Theater Center (2018 Trellis Resident Playwright), The 24 Hour Plays, The New Coordinates, Commission Theatre, First Floor Theater, and more. She has also been a finalist or semi-finalist for the O’Neill, Seven Devils, the Princess Grace Award, NNPN’s National Showcase, and Play Penn.

As a screenwriter, Grace has developed film, TV and audio projects with companies including HappyBad Bungalow, Mucho Mas Media, Picturestart, Hartbeat, and Temple Hill. Her feature HOT TED is currently in development, and she became a member of AGBO’s Storytellers Collective after her short 2 MINUTES placed 3rd in their annual No Sleep ‘Til Film Fest 48-Hour Film Festival. She has written and/or directed many other shorts that have screened at festivals such as NewFest, HollyShorts, and the Tribeca Film Festival, and once across Times Square as part of the Midnight Moment Series, the world’s largest, longest-running digital art exhibition. The pilot episode of TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE, the fiction podcast she created with Jessica Fisch, is now available to stream. Grace is a graduate of the University of Chicago, where she was the recipient of the Olga and Paul Menn Foundation Prize for Playwriting.

Photo by Xander Herman

NOT FANCY BIO

Grace is obsessed with dark comedy, horror comedy, romantic comedy, action comedy, teen comedy, and her very favorite, comedy comedy! She’s an avid observer of human behavior and writes about the social truths that amuse, confuse, and horrify her – but always through the lens of irreverent humor. She seeks to subvert expectations, provoke self-reflection, and, hopefully, make you cackle. When Grace isn't writing, she's probably busy being in love with her amazing wife Emma Maltby, lusting over menswear collections online, or rewatching LEGALLY BLONDE. She is not on social media, but she does maintain a burner Instagram solely to look at her wife’s posts, videos of pasta, and content related to the WNBA and the reality TV franchise THE TRAITORS.