Dael Orlandersmith is a playwright, actress, and poet who is best known for her Obie Award-winning Beauty's Daughter, for which she also received a Lucille Lortel Foundation Playwrights Fellowship. She was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Drama for Yellowman in 2002 and received the 2005 PEN/Laura Pels Foundation Award for a Playwright in Mid-Career, along with numerous other awards. She lives in New York City.