Cleiton Echeveste - Director Playwright Write Local Board; Karin Serres - Playwright, Translator, Write Local Board; Simone Spiteri - Playwright Actor Director Write Local Board; Deirdre Kelly Lavrakas - Director, Actor, New Play Development Write Local Board; Afeif Ismail - Playwright Poet; Jenny Ann Koppera - Artistic Director, Choreographer, Write Local Board; Kim Peter Kovac, New Play Development, Poet; Write Local Board; Ginni Manning, Playwright, Educator, Write Local Board.

Cleiton Echeveste is an actor, playwright, director and researcher based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Cleiton has a Master’s degree (UNIRIO) in Performing Arts. His thesis investigates gender and sexuality dissidences in Theatre for Young Audiences, based on the work developed over almost two decades with Pandorga Theatre Company. His plays have won awards and been translated into Spanish and published in Brazil, Peru and Argentina. He is a member of the Brazilian Center of ASSITEJ (CBTIJ/ASSITEJ Brasil), where he’s been president of the Board of Directors (2017-2023). He is part of the boards of Write Local Play Global (WLPG) and the International Inclusive Arts Network (IIAN) of ASSITEJ, and regularly collaborates with the ASSITEJ Ibero-American Network (IBEROASSITEJ).

Karin Serres is a playwright, novelist and set & costume designer based in Vincennes, France. She is a board member of Write Local, Play Global. Writing in some unknown place being her favorite creative energy, she loves to travel and work, any distance. Keen on collective intelligence and co-creation, passionate about the sensory diversity of the languages, she’s also committed into facilitating a more fair circulation of contemporary playwriting - especially TYA, leading multilingual writing projects or sensory workshops, and working for a greater diversity in worldwide french speaking theatre. Currently playwright in residence at Très Tôt Théâtre, Quimper, Transversales-Verdun and le Nest-CDN de Thionville, she’s also working on a long term with companies such as Entre Chien & Loup and La Loba.

Simone Spiteri is a playwright, performer and director. She trained for her Diploma in acting at the Malta Drama Centre. She obtained her B.A. (Hons.) in Theatre Studies in 2004 and her M.A. in Theatre Studies in 2011, both at the University of Malta. She is the Artistic Director of the theater company Dù Theater, which was founded in 2004, and twice awarded the Premju Francis Ebejer in 2009 and 2011. Her original work has been staged in several countries including Egypt, the US, England, Macedonia, Denmark and Spain. Her plays have been published in Żewġ Drammi: Repubblika Immakulata/Appuntamenti (2019). She is also the author of the YA series of novels Il-Vinkulari, published by Merlin Publishers. In 2014 she was an International Playwright Observers at New Visions/New Voices (Kennedy Centre, Wachington D.C). Simone is passionate about all aspects of the performance arts and is fluent in Maltese, English and Italian.

Deirdre Kelly Lavrakas was twice a US State Department Fellow in Palestine (East Jerusalem) and Israel and three more fellowships to Amman, Jordan, where she coordinated translation, into Arabic, the Theater Training Curriculum she created for the Center. She has also done master classes in eleven countries. Along with directing for Kennedy Center TYA (including collaborative projects with the PAC of Amman, Jordan, and the Pakistani Arts Council), from 1991-2021 she served as was co-Founding Producing Director of Center’s groundbreaking incubator for new plays New Visions/New Voices, which assisted in developing 111 works from 97 playwrights and 38 composers, working with 61U.S. and 12 international theaters. In 2011, she co-founded the Write Local Play Global ASSITEJ playwright network, with members in 50+ countries, and still serves as part of its leadership team. 

Kim Peter Kovac is formerly Artistic Director of Theater for Young Audiences at the Kennedy Center, the US national cultural center, where he commissioned and produced 100+ new plays for young audiences. He served on the board of TYA/USA for 19 years, and for 12 years on the Executive Committee of ASSITEJ, including 6 as Vice President and he recently received ASSITEJ'S Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in the USA.  Along with his work on Write Local Play Global, he is currently a poet with two published collections. 

Afeif Ismail is an internationally acclaimed bilingual Sudanese-Australian playwright, director, dramaturg, poet, and human rights activist. Extracts of his works have been translated into German, Spanish, and Swedish, and have been produced at notable venues: The Blue Room Theatre, Western Australia (WA) the World Fringe Festival WA, and Subiaco Arts Centre. In 2008, he received the Australian National Playwrights’ Conference (ANPC) Bursary. His children’s play, "The African Magician," commissioned and produced by Barking Gecko Theatre Company in WA, was nominated for the Australian Writers' Guild Award for Best Children’s Play in 2011. Afeif won the prestigious Ballina Region for Refugees Seeking Asylum Poetry Prize in 2022. Afeif’s poetry and short stories have appeared in multiple journals and anthologies, ( Westerly, Performance Poets, Unlimited Futures, Fremantle Press, Storyline, Mascara Literary Review, WestWords). In Arabic, Afeif has published seven poetry collections and three essay collections have garnered international critical acclaim.

Jenny Anne Koppera is the Artistic Director of Spinning Dot Theatre and has her MFA in Drama/Theatre for the Young from Eastern Michigan University and is active nationally and internationally in the field of children’s theatre. She is the Artistic Director and Founder of Spinning Dot Theatre, a Michigan Theatre company that focuses on supporting and developing global theatre with and for family audiences. She has worked with and received recognition from AATE, TYA/USA, IPAY, ASSITEJ International and has worked with The Kennedy Center’s New Visions/New Voices program, ASSITEJ's Write Local. Play Global. Network, Imaginate Children’s Theatre Festival, and Eastern Michigan University. She has sat on the Board of TYA/USA and collaborates frequently with the University of Michigan and the BIPOC Superhero Project.