Octavio Solis is a playwright and director whose works Quixote Nuevo, Mother Road, Hole in the Sky, Alicia’s Miracle, Se Llama Cristina, John Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven, Ghosts of the River, Lydia, June in a Box, Gibraltar, The Ballad of Pancho and Lucy, The Seven Visions of Encarnación, Dreamlandia, El Otro, Prospect, El Paso Blue, Santos & Santos, La Posada Mágica, Prospect and Man of the Flesh have been mounted across the country at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Hartford Stage, Huntington Theatre, Magic Theatre SF, Center Theatre Group, Theatre @ Boston Court, California Shakespeare Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, INTAR, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Dallas Theater Center, South Coast Repertory Theatre, San Diego Repertory Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, Cornerstone Theatre, Kitchen Dog Theatre, Shakespeare Dallas, Shadowlight Productions, Mixed Blood Theatre Company, Circle X Theatre Company, Tides Theatre, El Teatro Campesino, Teatro Vista, Teatro Dallas, Teatro Visión, Venture Theatre, Thick Description and Campo Santo at Intersection for the Arts. His collaborative works include Cloudlands, a musical co-written with Adam Gown and Shiner, co-written with Erik Ehn.
Solis has received the 2019 Distinguished Achievement In The American Theatre award from the William Inge Center for the Arts, the 2018 Imagen Award for his consultancy on Disney-Pixar’s Coco, the 2015 Distinguished Achievement Award from the Texas State University Black and Latino Playwrights Conference, the 2014 Pen Center Literary Award for Drama, the United States Artists Fellowship for 2012, the 2003 National Latino Playwriting Award, the 2000-2001 National Theatre Artists Residency from TCG and the Pew Charitable Trust, the 1998 TCG/NEA Theatre Artists in Residence Grant, the 1998 McKnight Fellowship grant from the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, the 1995-97 Playwriting Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the 1994 Will Glickman Playwright Award. Solis was recently inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters and is a Thornton Wilder Fellow for the MacDowell Colony, New Dramatists alum and member of the Dramatists Guild.
His new book, Retablos: Stories From A Life Lived Along The Border, published by City Lights Publishers, received the 2018 Silver Indies Award for Book of the Year and has been chosen by the National Reading Group Month’s Committee for the Great Group Reads 2019 Selections.