Craig Lucas is the author of Missing Persons, Blue Window, Reckless, Prelude to a Kiss, God’s Heart, The Dying Gaul, Stranger, Small Tragedy, The Singing Forest and Prayer for My Enemy. His screenplays include Longtime Companion, The Secret Lives of Dentists, Prelude to a Kiss, Reckless, Blue Window and The Dying Gaul, which he also directed. In New York he directed Harry Kondoleon’s Saved or Destroyed Rattlestick Theater and Play Yourself at New York Theater Workshop, as well as his own play This Thing of Darkness (co-authored with David Schulner) at the Atlantic Theater. With director Norman René he created Marry Me a Little: Songs by Stephen Sondheim. In addition to the book for The Light in the Piazza (music and lyrics by Adam Guettel), Mr. Lucas has written the musical play Three Postcards (composer/lyricist Craig Carnelia) and the libretto for the opera Orpheus in Love (composer Gerald Busby). Recently he adapted Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters and Strindberg’s Miss Julie and in new English versions. Twice nominated for a Tony (Prelude to a Kiss and The Light in the Piazza), three times for the Drama Desk (Prelude, Reckless and Missing Persons), he has received numerous awards including the Sundance Audience Award (Longtime Companion), L.A. Drama Critics (Blue Window), Obie Awards for Best Play (Prelude and Small Tragedy) and Best Director (Saved or Destroyed), American Theater Critics/Steinberg Award for Best American Play (The Singing Forest), New York Film Critics Award for Best Screenplay (The Secret Lives of Dentists), Excellence in Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Laura Pels/PEN Mid-Career Achievement Award. He recently finished directing Birds of America starring Matthew Perry, Hilary Swank, Ginnifer Goodwin and Ben Foster, which premieres in 2008 at the Sundance Film Festival.