Kandace James is a playwright who uses a poetic lens as a tool for telling magical, realistic stories centering Black, queer, and masculine-presenting women. At times, her plays feel like a eulogy. Other times, they feel like a baptism, a family reunion - but they always feel like coming home.
She was a national finalist for the John Cauble Award for Outstanding Short Play at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Nationals (KCACTF). Her screenplay Stellar Collision received the $25,000 first place award in the 2022 Alfred P. Sloan Script Competition at Carnegie Mellon University. She is currently a Core Apprentice Fellow at the Playwright's Center.
While at MacDowell, she will develop her one-act play, "This Is How You Capture The Light," into a full-length play, exploring family lineage, oral history, inheritance, and legacy - specifically through the exploration of the Black women who came before her, who owned homes and made them sacred.
At MacDowell, James completed a full-length play (a play she has struggled to finish since 2021) based on her award-winning one-act play, This Is How You Capture The Light. During her stay, she was named a quarterfinalist for the Frank Moffet Moiser Fellowship for Works in Heightened Language, with hopes of moving forward. Before her stay, she was a National Playwrights Conference semifinalist for the Eugene O’Neil Theatre Center.
