Tripwire Harlot Press is thrilled to announce two new authors to their Sledgehammer Series. Migdalia Cruz's new play collection Impossible Plays (2024) features visual art by Christian Potter Drury, and, Sharon Bridgforth's collection Before You Go (2025) includes interactive opportunities for the reader to participate in the construction of the book. These collections will be published over the next two years.
The Sledgehammer Series publishes playwrights who have been under-published in volumes that combine visual art with performative text to create a theatrical experience on the page. The first three Sledgehammer titles were Rarities & Wonders: Plays by Phillip Howze, Doodles from the Margins: Three Plays by Hansol Jung, and Plays by Christina Anderson. They are available wherever books are sold.
"I am thrilled to have been chosen for publication in Tripwire Harlot's 2024-25 Sledgehammer Series. Publication may be the only way some of us will survive as literature because of the ephemeral nature of theater. Sledgehammer is also the only press that gives the writer agency over how and which plays to publish. This trust of the playwright is an honor and a respect for the word that enlivens and enriches the art of theater. I am proud to be a part of it," says Migdalia Cruz.
Cruz's book will be published in 2024 and Bridgforth's book will be published in 2025.
"I am honored and deeply grateful to have this very personal work held and nourished by the Sledgehammer family. This frees me to root in my true intentions for the work, with Joy." says Sharon Bridgforth. "My Sledgehammer book, Before You Go, queerly explores a daughter's relationship with her aging mother as she seeks to understand, hold and heal the love that she feels for her. The piece is made of poems/prayers/letters and dreams between the mother and daughter, and journaling prompts - all of which serve as an invitation for those that receive the work to engage in their own healing rituals for themselves and their loved ones."
Sarah Ruhl and Sheila Callaghan were involved in beginning the project at Callaghan's press, Tripwire Harlot.
"I was thinking about all my favorite playwrights, gatekeepers of the publishing world sometimes take so long to publish a brilliant playwrights work even if their plays are being produced across the country. I'm swooning about highlighting the amazing and brilliant works of Migdalia Cruz and Sharon Bridgforth on this next Sledgehammer Series." says Ruhl.
Jacqueline Goldfinger is the Creative Director who helps shape the Series.
"We are demolishing the walls that separate the literary and the theatrical on the page. Our world is becoming more visual and new play publications should reflect how artists and audiences are both telling and experiencing stories in new ways." says Jacqueline Goldfinger.
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BIOS
Migdalia Cruz, the 2023 DGF Legacy Playwright, is a Bronx-born playwright, lyricist, translator, and librettist with over 60 works performed in 150 venues across 40 cities in 12 countries. Her awards include the NEA, McKnight, NYSCA, and TCG/Pew, and she was named the 2013 Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwright. Cruz's mentor María Irene Fornés and her residency at Latino Chicago shaped her career. She co-chaired the DGF Playwriting Fellows, mentors the Latinx Playwrights' Circle and is an alumna of New Dramatists.
Sharon Bridgforth is a writer that collaborates with actors, dancers, singers, visual artists and audiences to install moving soundscapes of her ritual/jazz texts. She is featured in: Dr. Omi Osun Joni L. Jones's book, Theatrical Jazz: Performance, Àse, and the Power of the Present Moment. Sharon is a 2023 United States Artists Fellow, a 2022 Winner of Yale's Windham Campbell Prize in Drama, 2020-2024 Playwrights' Center Core Member, 2022-2023 McKnight National Fellow and New Dramatists alumnae. A Doris Duke Performing Artist, she has received support from Creative Capital, MAP Fund and the National Performance Network. Her work is featured in: Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature; Mouths of Rain an Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought; Feminist Studies Vol 48 Number 1, honoring 40 years of This Bridge Called My Back and But Some of Us Are Brave! Sharon's bull-jean & dem/dey back, and All These Things: A Conversation by Sharon Bridgforth and Daniel Alexander Jones are published by 53rd State Press. An Associate Company Member at Pillsbury House + Theatre (PHT) in Minneapolis, MN. PHT produced mainstage productions of Sharon's work in 2022 & 2023. Sharon's dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/The Show premiered at PHT and is streaming on the Twin Cities PBS platform. A MAP Fund Scaffolding for Practicing Artists Coach, Sharon is a long time member of Pangea World Theater and Art2Action's National Institute for Directing and Ensemble Creation and is a mentor for Ananya Dance Theatre's NextGen ChoreoLab program: Chawrchā. More at sharonbridgforth.com
Keep an eye out for other announcements about our upcoming writers and their projects here and in our social media!