Jelisa Jay Robinson is a Black American playwright from Houston, Texas. Her plays include The Stories of Us, Fae and Paciencia, Delivery, Circle and We Both Suck Our Teeth. Her work has been developed and/or presented at The Billie Holiday Theatre (50in50), Fade to Black (Houston), Teatrx (Houston), 14/48 Theatre Festival (Austin), Austin One Minute Play Festival (Austin), the Austin Latino New Play Festival, Teatro Vivo (Austin), Now Africa Festival (New York), The Black and Brown Theatre (Detroit), The Rec Room (Houston), the Echame Un Ojo Festival (commission), Fornes Playwriting Workshop (Chicago), The Black and Latino Playwrights Celebration (San Marcos), The Landing Theatre (Houston)and Vision Latino (Chicago). She is a finalist for the La Mansion Baldwin Writers Residency in France (2020), a Bay Area Playwrights Festival Semi-Finalist (2020), a finalist for the Seattle Public Theatre New Play Prize (2017), a writer in the Rec Room Writers Group, a two time Fulbright Alternate and an alumni of the Fornes Playwrighting Workshop where she worked under the tutelage of Migdalia Cruz. Jelisa has held residencies with Vision Latino Theatre Company (Chicago), the National Playwrights Retreat (Colorado) and Texas State’s Black and Latino Playwrights Celebration. She is a theatre educator who has taught high school and elementary theatre. Jelisa has hosted various writing workshops for organizations like Clinton Global Initiative University, Texas State University, University of Texas-RGV, and Sovereign Noir's Black Women Virtual Writers Conference. She is also the co-founder of the Love Guru’s, a group dedicated to promoting self-love in the greater Houston area and beyond. Jelisa is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild, Scriptworks, an Alumna of Artist Inc. and a sister of Kappa Delta Chi Sorority, Inc.
You can find Jelisa watching Insecure, reading self-help books, taking walks near the water and basking in the sun. She's forever a student of Spanish, and a new student of Igbo and Nigerian Pidgin English (via her husband).