At MGCCC, Harris immersed herself in the performing arts at MGCCC, studying theatre under Kathryn Lewis and Daisha Walker, performing in campus productions and touring with the Perk Players Touring Company for two years, averaging 50 performances annually. She also performed with the Mississippi Sound music group while maintaining a 4.0 grade point average. Balancing a rigorous academic schedule with countless rehearsals and performances, Harris made the most of every opportunity to develop her craft. After Gulf Coast, Harris earned both her bachelor’s degree and Master of Fine Arts before launching an acclaimed career as a playwright, television writer and filmmaker.
Today, Harris is recognized as one of America’s most celebrated contemporary playwrights. Her critically acclaimed play, Is God Is, premiered at Soho Repertory Theatre, earning the Relentless Award, an OBIE Award for Playwriting and the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award. She later adapted and directed the work for film, which was released to critical acclaim under Amazon MGM’s prestigious Orion label.
Her ritual response to anti-Black violence, What to Send Up When It Goes Down, received a special commendation from the Blackburn Prize and was featured in American Theatre magazine before touring from New York City to Washington, D.C., and Boston. Her play On Sugarland, an adaptation inspired by the ancient Greek tragedy Philoctetes, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the Kesselring Prize.
Throughout her career, Harris has earned some of the arts’ highest honors, including the Windham-Campbell Literary Prize, Hermitage Greenfield Prize, Alpert Award, Horton Foote Award, Samuel French Award, an Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Doris Duke Artist Award. She is also a two-time MacDowell Fellow and has completed prestigious artist residencies across the United States and abroad.
Her work has been featured in Vogue, The New Yorker, The New York Times and Marie Claire, inspiring audiences through stories that challenge, provoke, and illuminate the human experience.
