DL Newton

DL Newton (she/her) is a playwright and poet, as well as a student at Bard Microcollege pursuing her first undergraduate degree at age 66. She began writing in 2017; she’s published several dozen poems. She was a finalist lyricist for the Anthem To Us project, sponsored by Lincoln Center and Brooklyn Public Library; Big Country, written with Damien Sneed, premiered at Lincoln Center in July 2024. Also in 2024, she was awarded a Poets Afloat micro-residency aboard a ship docked in NYC’s harbor. In 2022, she was waitlisted for a Millay Arts residency for her play with poetry, The Shattering of Glass, a story involving three unwanted pregnancies in 1922. In 2021, her play about the student loan debt crisis, Upon The Rack, was an O’Neill Center National Playwrights Conference semi-finalist. Sex Love + Data, a television pilot written with Gretchen Berger, was shortlisted for the Orchard Project’s Episodic Lab, also in 2021.

A Stagedoor Manor alumnus, she was a casting director from 1983-1990; she later worked in a Broadway production office; did a too-long stint in corporate advertising; and several years in local government.

She is a marathon runner, a mother, a reproductive and gender freedom activist, and a devoted New York Rangers fan.