Mary Lynn Owen is an award-winning playwright and actor, and a recently named finalist for the Dramatists Guild National Playwrights Fellows program. Her first full-length play, KNEAD, received its world premiere production at The Alliance Theatre in November 2018, and will receive its second production in January, 2024, at Aurora Theatre. KNEAD, a one-person play in which Mary Lynn also performs, baking four loaves of bread in every performance, is the recipient of the 2019 Gene Gabriel Moore Playwriting Award, The Alliance Theatre’s 2017 Reiser Lab Grant for New Work, and was named a semi-finalist for the 2017 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. Her second full-length play, LADY PARTS, was a semi-finalist for the 2020 O'Neill National Playwrights Conference and selected for the 2019 Working Title Playwrights First Light Series and Theatrical Outfit’s 2020 Unexpected Play Festival. Her third full-length play, SALVAGE, a 2022 Finalist for the O'Neill National Playwright's Conference, was chosen for the 2021 Threshold New Play Festival at Actor’s Express, the 2022 Working Title Playwrights Table Series, the 2023 Ethel Woolson Development Lab, and the 2023 Unexpected Play Festival at Theatrical Outfit. Mary Lynn’s shorter works include HOMING, commissioned in 2020 by the 22 Homes Project for the Alabama Shakespeare Southern Writers Festival, and TRAILERS, commissioned in 2019 by MultiShades Atlanta for the MoJo Theater Festival Monologue Project. She has received a MAP Grant through Synchronicity Theatre for the development of a play about Women and Work, and in 2022, she received the Carey Perloff Award, given by the Eugene O'Neill Foundation to an established theater artist who desires to transition to playwriting.
A regular performer on Atlanta’s professional stages, Mary Lynn is a two-time Suzi Award winner for both Outstanding Performer in a Leading Role and Outstanding Performer in a Supporting Role, an eight-time Suzi nominee, and a Lunt-Fontanne nominee. She is a frequent collaborator in many of Atlanta's New Works Festivals including The Kendeda Festival at The Alliance Theater, The Stripped Bare Festival at Synchronicity Theater, and The Brave New Works Festival at Theater Emory.
Mary Lynn is also a sought-after teacher in Emory University’s Theater Studies Department where she teaches Introduction to Acting, Teaching as Performance, and the popular, Taller de Teatro en Español (Theater Workshop in Spanish), a semester-long class designed to improve Spanish language proficiency using Theater techniques. She has been awarded several teaching grants from Emory including two Faculty Development and Excellence grants, The Hightower Funding Grant, The Integrity Project Grant, and The Center for Creativity Grant. In her ongoing collaboration with Emory’s Spanish Department, Mary Lynn has directed play readings by Spanish and Latinx playwrights, championed new work by playwrights such as Hilary Bettis, Anne Garcia Romero, and Alejandra Ramos, worked as a dramaturg for Mark Valdez’ play, THE BUFORD HIGHWAY PROJECT, about the lives of immigrants in Atlanta, and continued to master her Spanish, the native language of her mother’s Cuban-American family.
Mary Lynn’s professional affiliations include The Dramatist’s Guild/full member, Working Title Playwrights, Actor’s Equity Association, and SAG-Aftra. She has studied playwriting with Marsha Norman and Joseph Skibell and taken playwriting workshops with Kimberly Senior, Addae Moon, and Celise Kalke. Her writing residencies include The Eugene O'Neill Foundation/Tao House as the Travis Bogard Artist in Residence and the Carey Perloff Fellow; Cottages at Hedgebrook in Langley, WA; and The Hambidge Center in Rabun Gap, GA.
She lives in Atlanta with her husband, Rob, and she is mom to twins, Andrew and Eloisa.