Kelundra Smith is a storyteller whose mission is to connect people to cultural experiences and each other. As a playwright, she has a passion for southern historical narratives and writing stories about people who no one else sees. Her play, “The Wash” received a 2024 National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere; and the Atlanta production garnered five Suzi Bass Awards and the Off Broadway production won four Audelco Awards. Kelundra is also an arts journalist whose articles have been published in The New York Times, ESPN’s Andscape, Garden & Gun, Bitter Southerner, ArtsATL, American Theatre, and elsewhere. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild as well as the American Theatre Critics Association, where she co-founded the Edward Medina Prize for Excellence in Cultural Criticism. She has been a fellow at the National Critics Institute, guest critic at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, and a resident artist at both Hambidge Arts Center and the Crosstown Arts Center. She is currently the director of publications at Theatre Communications Group, which publishes American Theatre magazine and is also the nation’s largest independent publisher of dramatic literature. She holds bachelor’s degrees in journalism and theater from the University of Georgia and a master’s degree in arts journalism from Syracuse University.