Djanet Sears

Djanet is a playwright and director and is the winner of numerous literary awards. She is the recipient of the Stratford Festival's 2004 Timothy Findley Award, as well as Canada's highest literary honour for dramatic writing, the 1998 Govenor General's Literary Award. She is the the playwright and director of "Harlem Duet" which won multiple Dora Awards. This production was workshopped at the Joseph Papp Theatre in New York City where Djanet was the international artist -in-residence in 1996.

Her other honours include: the 1998 Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award, the Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award, the Harry Jerome Award for Excellence in the Cultural Industries and a Phenomenal Woman of the Arts Award.. Her most recent work for the stage, The Adventures of a Black Girl In Search of God, shortlisted for a 2004 Trillium Book Award and enjoyed a six month run as part of Mirvish Productions. Her other plays include Afrika Solo, Who Killed Katie Ross and Double Trouble. Djanet is the driving force behind the AfriCanadian Playwrights' Festival, and a founding member of the Obsidian Theatre Company. She is also the editor of Tesityin': Contemporary African Canadian Drama, Vols. I & II, the first anthologies of plays by playwrights of African descent in Canada.

Djanet is currently an adjunct professor at University College, University of Toronto and the writer-in-residence at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto.