Artist Bio

(Bio as of March 2015)

Ayad Akhtar’s plays include Disgraced (Broadway, LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater, 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and 2013 Obie Award for Extraordinary Achievement); The Who & The What (LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater and La Jolla Playhouse) and The Invisible Hand (New York Theatre Workshop/The Repertory Theater of St. Louis). Also a novelist, Mr. Akhtar is the author of American Dervish, published in 2012 by Little, Brown and Company, also in 20 languages worldwide. He co-wrote and starred in The War Within (Magnolia Pictures), which was released internationally and nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay. As an actor, Mr. Akhtar also starred as Neel Kashkari in HBO’s adaptation of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book Too Big to Fail.  He studied at Brown University and Columbia University’s School of the Arts.