Sam Shepard is an American playwright, actor, and television, and film director. Broadway works include Oh! Calcutta! (Eden Theatre), Operation Sidewinder (Vivian Beaumont Theatre), Fool for Love (Samuel J. Friedman Theatre), and his Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child (Brooks Atkinson Theatre). Off-Broadway works include A Particle of Dread (Jewel Box Theatre), Heartless (Irene Diamond Stage), A Lie of the Mind (Acorn Theatre), Ages of the Moon (Linda Gross Theater), The Tooth of Crime (Lucille Lortel Theatre), Curse of the Starving Class (Signature Theatre), Simpatico (Newman Theatre), Eyes for Consuela (N.Y.C. Center Stage), The Late Henry Moss (Peter Norton Space), and his OBIE Award-winning La Turista (Theater at St. Clement's Church).

His screenplay Paris, Texas, won the Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, received the Gold Medal for Drama, and has been inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame.