Playwrights on Television features interviews with writers of award-winning stage plays and celebrated television shows reflecting on the successes and challenges of being a playwright in the post-network television era.

In these conversations, eighteen dramatists consider their professional paths and creative choices, from training and education to thoughts on craft and technique, and discuss a range of issues relevant to the development of dramatic writing today. Theatergoers and TV aficionados alike will find new perspectives on the journeys traveled by some of their favorite plays and series, such as The Affair, The Americans, Boardwalk Empire, GLOW, House of Cards, Insecure, Mad Men, Orange Is the New Black, Shameless, She’s Gotta Have It, Vida, and The West Wing.

A valuable resource for aspiring stage and television writers, as well as theater and media scholars investigating the works of these dramatists, Playwrights on Television sheds light on the role of the contemporary playwright in the latest Golden Age of television.

Hillary Miller is a theater historian and the author of Drop Dead: Performance in Crisis, 1970s New York (2016). She is an assistant professor of English at Queens College, CUNY.