Biography

Most recently Carmen Peláez was commissioned by the Huntington Theater to write an adaptation of Antigone and awarded a 2023 Macdowell Fellowship as well As a 2023 Oolite Ellie award for her short film Colada. She is also developing a streaming series Tropical Beasts as well as her first feature, The Cuban Vote.

Carmen added writing to her CV after graduating American Academy of Dramatic Arts, frustrated by the limited parts for Latine actors, she wrote a solo play, Rum & Coke, which she performed to raves in NY, LA, Chicago and Miami culminating in an award winning off Broadway run in 2008.

In 2012, she won the HBO NYLFF Short Film Competition with The Acting Lesson, which she co-directed and followed up with the short, A Queen Without His Crown and most recently Mango Season for which she received an honorable mention at the 2020 Miami International Film Festival. In 2020 she was commissioned by Oolite to create the short doc Caridad y Gallo as part of their Close Quarters Series.

Miami post Brooklyn has been a joy after having found a theatrical home at Miami New Drama at the Colony theater which premiered her play Fake in 2019, commissioned Pride for its Seven Deadly Sins play, winner of the 2020 Drama League Award and The Cuban Vote which premiered in April of 2022 and extended twice. In 2024 she will be part of the Museum Plays.

To compliment her narrative work, she consulted on Netflix's One Day at a Time, the Story House Juguetes Perdidos project and Apple TV's Little America. She also was a contributor for NBC Latino and has written essays for Marie Claire, Huffington Post and the New York Times.

Carmen has proudly worked on President Barack Obama's Cuba policy team and is on President Biden's Cuba advisory team and is excited to continue to write about her confounding and always entertaining Miami and beyond.
- IMDb mini biography by: Carmen Peláez