Grace Ward is a playwright, librettist, and screenwriter from the wildflower-filled foothills of Boise, Idaho. Raised on the road with her parents’ rock band, she developed an early love for outrageous comedy, protest art, and storytelling in community. Her work often centers girlhood, neurodivergence, and women reclaiming power in unconventional ways. She is deeply committed to creating complex, funny roles for women and crafting comedy-forward stories that feature bold women. 

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Grace holds an MFA in Creative Writing for Young People and Dramatic Writing from Antioch University in Los Angeles, where she studied under Colette Freedman, Francesca Lia Block and Guadalupe Garcia McCall, among others. She graduated valedictorian in 2025. She is an alum of the Seattle Opera Creation Lab, the Surel’s Place Residency, and the National Theatre Institute. Grace’s work has been developed and presented by Seattle Opera, Boise Contemporary Theatre, SheArts Festival, and Connective Theatre Co. in Chicago.

 

As a librettist and lyricist, she has written two children’s musicals, a one-act opera (Caccini’s Ghost, Seattle Opera, 2025), and two full-length musicals. BL!NK, her current flagship project co-written with composer Elke Myers, is a hot-pink musical comedy about ambition, friendship, and what it means to be a woman in STEM. BL!NK began development at Surel’s Place in 2020 and has since received a Covid Cultural Commissioning Fund award, workshop and pitch competition recognition at the Musical Writers Festival, and a 2025 production premiere at the SheDFW Festival. Grace and Elke’s other project, The Wind in the Wildflowers, a feminist adaptation of The Wind in the Willows, premiered as a Chilren’s Reading Series smash hit at Boise Contemporary Theatre in spring 2025. BCT has commissioned a second children’s musical from Grace and Elke which will debut at Christmastime in 2025.

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Grace’s writing accolades include the Ginny Rorby Scholarship (Mendocino Coast Writers Conference 2024), the SheArts Composers Scholarship (Musical Writers Festival 2024), and the Eloise Klein Healy Scholarship for Feminist Writing at Antioch University-LA. Her essays and short fiction have been published in Clockhouse Literary Journal, Noyo Review, and Antioch Voices. Outside of writing, she works full-time in a special education classroom and coaches middle school cheerleading.