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Anne Washburn's plays include 10 out of 12, Antlia Pneumatica, Apparition, The Communist Dracula Pageant, A Devil At Noon, I Have Loved Strangers, The Internationalist, The Ladies, Little Bunny Foo Foo, Mr. Burns, Shipwreck, The Small, an adaption of The Twilight Zone, and transadaptations of Euripides' Orestes & Iphigenia in Aulis. Her work has been produced nationally, and internationally. Awards include a Whiting, a Guggenheim, an Alpert Award, a PEN/Laura Pels award, a NYFA Fellowship, a Time Warner Fellowship, Susan Smith Blackburn finalist twice, and residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo.
Rod Serling (1924-1975) was born in Syracuse, N.Y. and grew up in Binghamton. While a student at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Serling sold his first three national radio scripts - and even his first television script. From 1951-1955, more than 70 of his television scripts were produced, garnering both critical and public acclaim. Full-scale success came on Wednesday, January 12th, 1955 with the live airing of his first Kraft Television Theatre script Patterns. Deemed a "creative triumph" by critics, and the
winner of the first of Serling's six Emmy awards, the acclaimed production was actually remounted live to air a second time on February 9th, 1955 - an unprecedented event. Serling went on to work for CBS' illustrious Playhouse 90, for which he crafted 90 minute dramas including the multiple-Emmy Award-winning Requiem For A Heavyweight. Serling shocked many of his fans in 1957 when he left Playhouse 90 to create a science-fiction series he called The Twilight Zone. The show debuted in 1959 and CBS
would air 156 episodes of The Twilight Zone, an astonishing 92 of which were written by Serling over its five year run.
Charles Beaumont (1929-1967) was a prolific American author of speculative fiction, including short stories in the horror and science fiction subgenres. He is perhaps best remembered as the writer of many classic Twilight Zone episodes (many of them based upon his own short stories), and also penned feature film screenplays, among them 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, The Intruder (based on his own novel) and The Masque of the Red Death. As best-selling novelist Dean R. Koontz has said, "[Charles Beaumont was] one of the seminal influences on writers of the fantastic and macabre."
Richard Matheson (1926-2013) is the author of many classic novels and short stories. He wrote in a variety of genres including terror, fantasy, horror, paranormal, suspense, science fiction and western. In addition to books, he wrote prolifically for television (including The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Star Trek) and numerous feature films. Many of Matheson's novels and stories have been made into movies including I Am Legend, Somewhere in Time, and Shrinking Man. His many awards include the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker Awards for Lifetime Achievement, the Hugo Award, Edgar Award, Spur Award for Best Western Novel, Writer's Guild awards, and in 2010 he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
