Stefani Kuo (郭佳怡) is a poet/playwright/performer and native of Hong Kong and Taiwan. She received her B.A. from Yale and her M.F.A. in playwriting from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. Her play on the Hong Kong protests, Final Boarding Call, was the winner of the 2021 Lead Ryan Fund for Emerging Women Writers’ Prize. Her play Wake was presented in the Yale Langston Hughes Festival 2022. Her play Pearl’s Beauty Salon was produced in May 2024 as part of the Yale Carlotta Festival.
She was a member of Interstate-73, Page 73’s Writers Group, in 2019. Her work in creative non-fiction, poetry, and translation have appeared in The New York Times, China Hands, Yale Literary Magazine, and other publications. As a performer, she was most recently seen in Arlington by Enda Walsh, directed by Bobbin Ramsey, as well as her one-woman show Moonie at the Yale Cabaret.
While at MacDowell, Kuo worked on three plays. She worked on a new play, tentatively titled Mercury Child, about the excavation and history of the First Emperor of China's Mausoleum. It was commissioned by Ensemble Studio Theatre as part of their EST/Sloan Commission. She also worked on a rewrite of Pig, a commission from Atlantic Theatre Company, about the loneliness epidemic and scam industry. Finally, she began a rewrite of her play Pearl's Beauty Salon. Pearl's is a love letter to her hometown of Hong Kong, and a story told via history, fantasy, nostalgia, and the Brazilian waxing industry. Additionally, she also worked on a long form personal essay on friendship and long-distance thru-hiking, as well as the beginnings of a new feature film idea.
Portrait by Joseph O'Malley
