Joseph Vitale, a finalist for the 2020 Woodward-Newman drama prize and a semi-finalist for the 2012 Eugene O’Neill Theater/National Playwrights Conference, is the author of a number of plays, including Dragons in the Crease, which was performed at New York’s Hudson Guild Theater in 2019. Murrow, a one-man show about the life of Edward R. Murrow (called “a dramatic masterpiece” by the Huffington Post), was performed Off-Off Broadway in May 2016 at The Phoenix Theatre Ensemble. Back Channel premiered at The Theater Project in New Jersey in 2018. The Fourth State of Matter was performed in 2011 at the Theater for the New City in New York and was later nominated for the National Playwrights Conference. His one-acts have been produced at the Hudson Guild, Barrow Group and Manhattan Repertory theaters in New York and at theaters around the country, and have won two "best play" awards. He is a graduate of Rutgers, Columbia and the New School for Social Research and studied playwriting at the HB Studio in New York. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and the Theater Project Playwrights Workshop. He received a 2021 fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts for playwriting. His work is catalogued at newplayexchange.org. Website: www.josephvitale.net