FALL DEVELOPMENTAL STAGE SUBMISSIONS

Khiyon Hursey (Book Writer, Songwriter) is a writer and composer based in Los Angeles and New York. He was a staff writer for Netflix’s romantic musical drama, SOUNDTRACK and is currently co-writing LOVE IN AMERICA, a movie musical to be produced by Issa Rae at Universal. Additionally, he is currently co-penning songs with Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (Lala Land, Greatest Showman) for a major motion picture. He has television and film projects in development with HBOmax, Kevin Hart and Andre 3000. He is the recipient of the ASCAP Foundation’s Irving Burgie Scholarship, Bart Howard Songwriting Scholarship, and the Lucille and Jack Yellen award, a 2016 NAMT Writers Grant, a 2016 – 2017 Dramatists Guild Musical Theater Fellow, 2017 Space on Ryder Farm Residency, 2018 Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project residency, 2019 ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop with Stephen Schwartz, 2019 Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, the 2020 Johnny Mercer Writers Grove at Goodspeed Musicals and the 2020 Stephen Schwartz Award. His musical, EASTBOUND (Book and Lyrics) was selected for the 2020 National Alliance of Musical Theatre Conference and he has works in development at New York Stage and Film and Ars Nova. Khiyon got his start as the music assistant on the off-Broadway and Broadway productions and the Grammy Award Winning Cast Album of HAMILTON. He’s been a guest lecturer at Columbia, Yale and Berklee College of Music on Musical Theater. He is a graduate of Berklee College of Music with a degree in Songwriting.

Adin Walker (Director) is movement director and associate director for the internationally-touring dance, puppetry, and climate-justice focused Phantom Limb Company, whose production Falling Out about the 2011 tsunami and radiation disaster in Fukushima premiered in BAM’s Next Wave Festival in 2018. Adin recently directed the world premieres of Yilong Liu’s PrEP Play, or Blue Parachute in San Francisco with the New Conservatory Theater Center and Roger Q. Mason’s The White Dress (Off-Broadway), and choreographed productions of Paula Vogel’s Tony award-winning Indecent with the Chautauqua Theater in New York (dir. Lisa Rothe) and with Artists Repertory Theater + Profile Theater in Portland, OR (dir. Josh Hecht). As director and choreographer, Adin collaborates frequently with writers and composers Philip Dawkins, L M Feldman, Ava Geyer, Jaime Jarrett, Emily Kitchens, Anya Pearson, Esperanza Rosales-Balcarcel, and Louisa Thompson. Adin danced principal roles in works by Karole Armitage, Christopher K. Morgan, Alex Neoral, and Maleek Washington, has been an associate to directors and choreographers including Tony award-winner Rebecca Taichman, Shana Cooper, May Adrales, Dustin Wills, Dawn Monique Williams, and Yehuda Hyman, and has been a guest artist/lecturer at Yale School of Drama, Princeton, and NYU Tisch. Adin is currently in residence at Stanford University as a doctoral candidate in Performance Studies. BA: Princeton. www.adinwalker.com

Julian Hornik (Songwriter) is a Brooklyn-based composer/lyricist and librettist whose work has been performed at, amongst others, the Kennedy Center, New York City Center, Ars Nova, and Carnegie Hall. His song-cycle commissioned by the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus was set to premiere at Davies Symphony Hall in March 2020 (postponed due to Covid). He has developed shows at the ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop, the Johnny Mercer Songwriter’s Project, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, and is a member of the Orchard Project Greenhouse. Julian is the recipient of the 2017 Lucille and Jack Yellen Award and the 2018 Sammy Cahn Award from the ASCAP Foundation, Yale’s Norman Holmes Pearson Prize, and is a 2020 Jonathan Larson Grant finalist.

Mark Sonnenblick (Songwriter) Mark Sonnenblick is an Emmy and Drama Desk-nominated writer whose collaborations include Midnight at The Never Get, Saturday Night Seder, Independents, and Dragons Love Tacos. He’s written songs for HBO and Comedy Central and won a Jonathan Larson Grant. Upcoming: Spirited (Apple TV), Lyle Lyle Crocodile (Sony Pictures), Theater Camp (PictureStart).