Velina Hasu Houston

b. May 5, 1957

daughter of Lemo Houston (a career soldier of mixed African American and Native American heritage) and Setsuko (Takechi) Perry (of Japanese heritage)

one son, Kiyoshi Sean Shannen Houston

Kansas State University at Manhatten, BA, 1979

University of California at Los Angeles, MFA, 1981

University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television, Ph.D.

Head of Playwriting, University of Southern California School of Theatre

Velina Hasu Houston's most popular work is her critically acclaimed play, Tea. It and many of her other works have been presented internationally, garnering more than three dozen writing awards. Her other critically acclaimed plays include Asa Ga Kimashita, Kokoro, The Matsuyama Mirror, Hula Heart, Ikebana (Living Flowers), Shedding the Tiger, and Waiting for Tadashi. She has been recognized three times by The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, twice been selected as a Rockefeller Foundation playwriting fellow, and was a recipient of a Japan Foundation fellowship and a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation grant. She was chosen as the inaugural recipient of the Remy Martin New Vision Award from Sidney Poitier and the American Film Institute. Velina Hasu Houston is also a published poet and essayist; and writes for film, radio and television as well. A specialist in Pan-Asian American feminist dramatic literature, she edited the anthologies The Politics of Life: Four Plays by Asian American Women and But Still, Like Air, I'll Rise: New Asian American Plays. She has lectured at institutions nationwide and taught screenwriting at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Theatre, Film and Television. Velina Hasu Houston teaches courses in Playwriting and Theatre History and Literature.


Velina Hasu Houston


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