Karen Malpede is a playwright, director, and essayist whose groundbreaking work
spans over six decades in New York City’s cultural avant-garde. She is the author and
director of 22 plays and the co-founder of Theater Three Collaborative, established in
1995 with her late husband and artistic partner, the OBIE-winning actor and producer
George Bartenieff. Together, they created socially and politically charged theater that
challenged conventional narratives and championed justice.

Her memoir Last Radiance (Vine Leaves Press, October 2025) marks her first work in
nonfiction, following a lifetime devoted to the stage. Earlier in her career, Malpede
published the seminal People’s Theater in Amerika (1972), a classic of theater history,
and Women in Theater: Compassion & Hope (1984), one of the first books to spotlight
women theater artists during the second wave of feminism. She also co-founded New
Cycle Theater in Brooklyn.

Her recent plays include Troy Too (HERE), Other Than We, which follows Extreme
Whether (La MaMa, New York, 2018; ArtCop21, Paris, 2015; Theater for the New City,
2014), and the short pieces Dinner During Yemen (Signature Theater, 2018) and
Hermes in the Anthropocene: A Dogologue (University of Iowa, 2019; Reed College,
2015). Her earlier work includes The Beekeeper’s Daughter (revived in 2016 at Theater
for the New City), Another Life (RADA, London; Irondale, Brooklyn; Gerald W. Lynch
Theater), Prophecy (English Theatre Berlin; New End Theatre, London; 4th Street
Theatre, NYC), and the docudrama Iraq: Speaking of War (Culture Project, CUNY).
Her play, Blue Valiant, written for Kathleen Chalfant and George Bartenieff, was staged
at Farm Arts Collective, immediately after lockdown ended, in May 2021, and filmed for
YouTube, where it is still available to view. It was Bartenieff’s final live acting appearance. He and Chalfant had earlier played a couple in a tumultuous yet loving marriage in Malpede’s Prophecy.

Malpede is the author of the recent play anthologies, 4 by Malpede Plus and
Intervention, Plays in Time: The Beekeeper’s Daughter, Prophecy, Another Life,
Extreme Whether; lead editor of Acts of War: Iraq & Afghanistan in Seven Plays; and
author of the anthology A Monster Has Stolen the Sun and Other Plays. Her essays,
fiction, and short plays—often centered on ecofeminism, climate justice, war, and
witness—have appeared in The Kenyon Review, TriQuarterly, Dark Matter, HowlRound,
Transformations, Torture Magazine, New Theater Quarterly, TDR, The New York Times,
and more.

She was an adjunct associate professor in the Environmental Justice and Theater
programs at John Jay College (CUNY), and a McKnight National Playwrights’, NYFA, and Vogelstein fellow. Malpede is also a member of PEN, the Dramatists Guild, the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), and Brooklyn for Peace.