Ariel Dorfman is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. Dorfman's works have been translated into more than 40 languages and performed in over 100 countries. Besides poetry, essays and novels — Lowell Thomas Award-winning travel book, Desert Memories; Hard Rain, winner of the Sudamericana Award; Widows; The Last Song of Manuel Sendero; Mascara; Konfidenz; The Nanny and the Iceberg; Exorcising Terror; and Blake’s Therapy — he has written short stories, including My House Is on Fire, general nonfiction including The Empire’s Old Clothes, and his memoir, Heading South, Looking North. He has won various international awards, including two Kennedy Center Theater Awards. 

Dorfman’s plays include his Broadway debut, Death and the Maiden (Brooks Atkinson Theatre); Widows (59E59); The Other Side (New National Theatre); Speak Truth to Power: Voices from Beyond the Dark (Kennedy Center); Purgatorio (Seattle Repertory); and Picasso’s Closet (Theater J).