Meet the Playwright Breaking Barriers and Rewriting Fairy Tales for a New Generation
CHICAGO, July 17, 2025 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- There's something wonderfully otherworldly about Mallory Raven-Ellen Backstrom — and now the real world is taking notice. The visionary playwright, author, illustrator, and founder of Fairy Tales for Sunkissed Women has just been named the latest recipient of the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award and Jay Harris Commission, making her one of only a few Black women to win this prestigious honor.
Backstrom's award-winning play, Cephianne's Reflection, is a shimmering testament to her singular talent for conjuring poetic universes where mysticism, mindfulness, and the enchantment of divine expression come alive on the page and the stage.
Starting July 24th through August 3rd, Backstrom will bring her spellbinding voice to Williamstown, Massachusetts, where she will serve as an Artist in Residence at the iconic Williamstown Theatre Festival. There, she'll continue building new worlds as a unique wordsmith, teaching artist, and creator sprinkling stardust on everyone lucky enough to enter her orbit.
Mallory's career is a constellation of milestones that could only belong to a mythmaker specializing in new cosmologies where fantasy is soul craft. An alumna of the Playwrights' Unit at Goodman Theatre, a Chicago Esteemed Artist Award recipient, a 3Arts Make-A-Wave awardee, and a Chicago Dramatist Tutterow Fellow. She was the inaugural Daniel J. Sullivan Playwright in Residence at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. A finalist for the National Playwrights Conference, Cephianne's Reflection, was featured at Goodman Theatre's Future Labs and New Stages Festival and was championed by CineCity Studios. Her play A Laying on of Hands was nurtured by The Story Theatre and Chicago Dramatists. Mallory's witchy fable, Once in a Bleu Moon, was supported by Sideshow Theatre, The Athena Project, and The New Coordinates Theatre.
Fairy Tales for Sunkissed Women LLC is a whimsical ecosystem that invites readers and makers alike to manifest their own happily ever afters because, as Mallory says, Beloved, you deserve it.
In addition to her Williamstown Theatre Festival commission, Revelry of Ash and Loam, Mallory's next adventures include her children's book Let's Catch a Happily Ever After and Fairy Tales for Sunkissed Women, a collection of short stories designed to nurture the feral, fecund feminine.
So, whether you find her on stage, in a lecture hall, or tucked inside the pages of a fairy tale, one thing's certain: Mallory Raven-Ellen Backstrom is a reminder that sometimes magic is very, very real.
Connect:
@fairytalesforsunkissedwomen | @pocketspiritguide | @MalloryRavenEllenBackstrom
Media Contact
Mallory Backstrom, Mallory Backstrom, 1 630.399.3704, [email protected], www.MalloryBackstrom.com
SOURCE Mallory Backstrom
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