Angelo Parra, who grew up in the Bronx, is an award-winning playwright and playwriting instructor. In the mid-80s, he walked out on a successful corporate communications career to devote himself to playwriting. In the years that followed, he's had productions of his plays: Off-Broadway in New York City and in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.; and at Hartford Stage, Florida Stage, the Cape (Cod) Playhouse, George Street Playhouse, Theatre Memphis, Passage Theatre, and Cleveland Play House, Merrimack Rep, and Florida Rep, among other prestigious venues. He is also the author of "Playwriting for Dummies," available on Amazon. Angelo wrote "The Devil's Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith," the critically acclaimed play with music named among the "Top-Ten Off-Broadway Experiences" by the New York Daily News. "The Devil's Music" was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award, and, in 2012, was asked to the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the only play ever invited to the music festival. Another of his plays, "Journey of the Heart" (which dramatizes the seesaw struggle of a hospital committee to decide who gets a heart for transplant), won the Jewel Box Theatre Award, Mixed Blood Versus America Award, and David James Ellis Memorial Award. His screenplay adaptation of "Journey of the Heart" was a finalist in the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program. Angelo's honors include two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships in Scriptwriting, and the 1998 Chicano/Latino Literary Award (University of California) for his play, "Song of the Coquí." In 2000, he was named a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the prestigious Sewanee Writers Conference. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, a member emeritus of the BMI/Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, and former member of the Actors Studio Playwrights-Directors Lab. In 2008, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Landmarks of American History and Culture grant, and earlier was a recipient of a Fund for U.S. Artists at International Festivals and Exhibitions grant (a partnership of the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S. Information Agency, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Pew Charitable Trusts). Angelo studied playwriting at: Roundabout Theatre Conservatory's Professional Playwright's Unit; New Dramatists Playwrights Forum; Albert Innaurato's playwrights workshop at Playwrights Horizons; and, the Playwrights Lab at T. Schreiber Studio, among others. He holds a B.A. in Journalism from Fordham University and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Playwriting, earned under the late Jack Gelber at Brooklyn College. Angelo Parra is the founder and director of the Hudson Valley Professional Playwrights Lab, president of the Board of Penguin Rep Theatre in Stony Point, N.Y., and teaches playwriting at the Hudson Valley Writers Center in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., and at SUNY Rockland Community College.