KARA KOWALSKI is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she studied Creative Writing with a Theatre minor and Playwriting Module. She has also been a longtime student at Piven Theatre Workshop and joined their teaching and development team post grad. Her background teaching and directing story theatre deeply informs her work. She believes that moments of transition are theatrical in their own right and she works to highlight these transformations through magical realism. Thematically, she’s drawn to stories that investigate queerness, femininity, and self discovery. Through humor she aims to give audiences a greater capacity to critically engage with the difficult topics that come up in her work. In 2024 at Piven Theatre, she produced the staged reading of her play, Parrots Can’t Talk Back, a comedic drama where a marriage proposal catapults a young woman from her small town curatorial position and personal troubles into a literal fight for her life on the high seas.