Katori Hall is a playwright-performer from Memphis, Tennessee.  Her plays include Hoodoo Love, which was produced Off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre, and The Mountaintop, which won Best New Play at the 2010 Olivier Awards. Hall was shortlisted for the London Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright Award and received the Otis Guernsey New Voices Playwriting Award from the William Inge Theatre Festival, the first African-American to be honored with this award.  She graduated from Columbia University and the American Repertory Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University with an M.F.A. in acting and is a recent graduate of the Juilliard School's playwriting program. She resides in New York City.