Winter Miller is a playwright.  Her play, In Darfur has been developed by The Guthrie Theater, The Public Theater, Geva Theater, and The Playwrights Center. The play was the recipient of the Guthrie’s “Two-Headed Challenge” in 2006. Ms. Miller traveled with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to the Sudan border to interview genocide survivors.

Winter Miller wrote In Darfur based on interviews conducted in March 2006 at the Sudan border with genocide survivors. Ms. Miller said “I had no idea how to portray something as incomprehensible as genocide, but I couldn’t write this play if I wasn’t on the ground to see it with my own eyes.”

I first encountered Hawa's story while working as a research assistant for Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist who had written about her in his ongoing coverage of Darfur. Some months later, I got a commission from the Guthrie Theater and Playlabs in Minneapolis to write a play about the crisis. I eventually persuaded Nick to let me go with him (I wore him down) to the refugee camps along the Chad-Sudan border. The result was In Darfur, a play that has as its protagonist a woman named Hawa.

Ms. Miller is the former research assistant to Nicholas Kristof, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist who often writes about the genocide in Darfur to raise awareness. She’s now a reporter on the Times' Metropolitan news desk. Her other plays include: Conspicuous; The Penetration Play; Cake and Ice Cream; Greetings from Vietnam; and Wish You Were Here.

Ms. Miller said the goal in writing this play is “a seed planted in the audience’s mind that leads them to ask, “What will I do, knowing what I now know?”

Her other endeavors

Ms. Miller’s plays include: The Penetration Play (produced by 13P), published by Playscripts Inc., excerpted in Smith & Kraus’ Best Stage Scenes 2005 and Best Monologues 2005; Conspicuous (produced by Keen Company’s Keen Teens); Something’s Wrong with Amandine (Theatreworks developmental workshop); and Cake and Ice Cream (readings at The New Group, Rattlestick, the DR2 and New Georges.)

Her monologue, Mother to Son is published in Eve Ensler’s anthology A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer. The monologue is presently touring cities across the United States with the photo exhibit, Darfur/Darfur and the documentary “The Devil Came on Horseback.”

Ms. Miller has written for The New York Times. A graduate of Smith, she holds an MFA from Columbia and is a member of the Obie-winning 13Playwrights and an affiliated artist with New Georges.

For more information about Ms. Miller, please visit her website at wintermiller.com.