Dr. Bonnie Culver

Bonnie Culver is the Wilkes University creative writing program co-founder and a screenwriter, playwright and novelist. Bonnie’s 20+ plays have been produced from NY to LA by colleges, regional theaters and equity companies. Her professionally produced plays include: Lifelines, Group S.O.S. (male and female versions), Accident, and Sniper. In 2004, Sniper won the New Jersey Arts Council Perry Award for Excellence in the Production of an Original Play and was produced Off-Broadway at Center Stage, NYC, in 2005. In 2006, Sniper was included in the Florida Studio Theatre’s Richard and Betty Burdick National Playwriting Reading series, an annual event that showcases “the best in American contemporary theatre.” Her screenplays Sniper, Group S.O.S., and Watchfires were Sundance Film Development Program finalists. Marlee Matlin’s film company, Solo One Productions optioned her film Rainbow Man. The 2011 Villagers Playhouse production of Sniper was nominated for seven NJ Perry Awards. The original showcase premier in Red Bank, New Jersey, earned the “Best Original Play” Perry Award in 2003. Her short plays “Cell” and “GPS” were produced in a festival of one-acts at The Venue, Norfolk, VA and her play “Auto-mated” was produced on the Virginia Eastern Shore and her essay “The Moon on the River” was included in an anthology of music, poetry, memoir, and essays, Written on Water: Writings About the Alleghany River (Mayapple Press). Group S.O.S., (male and female cast versions) and interviews with the directors who first produced the plays is available at Havescripts.com. Her play GPS directed by faculty member Gregory Fletcher won the Piney Fork Short Play Festival, NYC, as “best play of the festival.” Dr. Culver received her M.A. and PhD from Binghamton University. At Wilkes, she is an associate professor of English, a former college dean, and co-founder/director of the Graduate Creative Writing Program. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, past president of the James Jones Society, and an advisory board member of the Norman Mailer Society and Etruscan Press. Recently, she just completed her second term as the chair of the Board of Trustees of AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs). In 2018, her play Auto-Mated was included in a 10 Minute Play Festival (Can we Talk?) at Carroll College, Montana, of Plays by Women. Her play A Ticket to the Circus, a one-woman show based upon the memoir of Norris Church Mailer is scheduled to open at the Edgemar Center for the Arts in California in 2020, directed and produced by Michelle Danner and starring Anne Archer.