SANDRA FENICHEL ASHER's plays have been produced nationally and abroad. Across the Plains was selected for the Kennedy Center's New Visions/New Voices Symposium. In the Garden of the Selfish Giant won the IRT/Bonderman National Playwriting Symposium Award, the New England Theatre Conference Aurand Harris Playwriting Award, and the American Alliance for Theatre and Education’s Distinguished Play Award. A Woman Called Truth has been honored with the AATE Distinguished Play Award, the Bonderman Award, an ASSITEJ Outstanding Play for Young Audiences citation, and the Joseph Campbell Memorial Award presented by The Open Eye Theater. Jesse and Grace: A Best Friends Story, commissioned by Pollyanna Theatre, Austin, TX, was chosen for development by Northwestern University's Purple Crayon Players and won a third AATE Distinguished Play Award. Walking Toward America, developed at NYU’s New Plays for Young Audiences workshop and symposium at the Provincetown Playhouse, was chosen for the 2015 United Solo Festival in New York City. MARIPOSA/BUTTERFLY, co-written with Jose Casas, was also chosen for NYU's New Plays for Young Audiences developmental workshop and went on to win a fourth AATE Distinguished Play Award.
A recipient of an NEA fellowship grant in playwriting, AATE's Charlotte Chorpenning Award for a distinguished body of work in children's theatre, the Sara Spencer Artistic Achievement Award for lifetime contributions to the field, and an Aurand Harris Fellowship grant from the Children's Theatre Foundation of America, Sandy is also the author of more than two dozen books for young readers, including the acclaimed picture books Too Many Frogs!, Chicken Story Time, and Sophie's Monster Goes to Shul. She has edited several anthologies, among them With All My Heart, With All My Mind: 13 Stories About Growing Up Jewish, (winner of the National Jewish Book Award for children's literature), Writing It Right: How Children’s Authors Revise and Sell Their Stories, and American Heartbeat: True Stories Told in Scenes and Monologues.
Sandy has developed several community-based scripts, weaving interviews and original writings into theatre pieces: Family Matters, commissioned by Youth Theatre at the U (University of Utah); We Will Remember: A Tribute to Veterans, for Prime Stage, Pittsburgh; To Life! Growing Up Jewish in America, commissioned by the Omaha Theater Company; Stuff: A Curious Collection, commissioned by Adventure Stage Chicago and It Happened at the Library, for the Lancaster (PA) Public Library. Several of her plays are based on the memoirs of individual subjects, among them A Woman Called Truth, Walking Toward America, and Death Valley: A Love Story, which was developed into a film and guidebook for use in grief therapy.
Six of Sandy's plays are anthologized in Tell Your Story: The Plays and Playwriting of Sandra Fenichel Asher (Dramatic Publishing). She is the founder and co-chair of American Theatre for the Very Young: A Digital Festival, and a member of AATE, TYA/USA, the Dramatists Guild, Authors Guild, and Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. She and her husband live in Lancaster, PA, with their cat, Friday, and dog, Gracie. Visit Sandy at sandyasher.com.
