Photo by Matthew Murphy

Donna Di Novelli has a writing career that spans film, opera, music-theater, and stage. Di Novelli received a N.Y.C. Woman’s Fund/NYFA grant for finishing funds for her short movie, “When Last Seen” in 2023, which she wrote and directed. She is in preproduction for “Nubile” a short movie co-directing with Kevin Newbury. She was the co-writer on the lauded “Madeline’s Madeline” directed by Josephine Decker and premiering at Sundance Film Festival, the Berlinale and BAMCinemaFest in 2018. Distributed by Neon, it is available across digital platforms and was nominated by Gotham Awards as Best Film and Breakout Artist. Her first screenplay, “Stag” was made into an award-winning short film by Newbury. “Stag” screened at a dozen film festivals (winning “Best of New York”) and is now available on iTunes. “The Good Swimmer”, a pop requiem with music by Heidi Rodewald sold-out in its premiere at BAM’s 2018 Next Wave Festival, after having been presented as a theatrical work at Prototype Festival in 2016, directed by Newbury. With long-time collaborator, Randall Eng, she wrote the genre bending, jazz-infused opera “Florida” which premiered at UrbanArias in April 2018. Her collaboration with Eng continues with “Before the Night Sky,” seen in excerpts at Manhattan’s Town Hall in a presentation by Opera America. With Paola Prestini she premiered a concert version of “Oceanic Verses,” at the Barbican Theatre after a presentation at the Kennedy Center and River to River Festival NYC in June 2012. “Heart of a Soldier,” written with Grammy-winning composer Christopher Theofanidis, was commissioned by the San Francisco Opera and premiered in September 2011. Di Novelli wrote text and translated Latin hymns for “Hildegard: A Measure of Joy,” commissioned by the San Francisco Grammy-winning vocal ensemble, Chanticleer. Di Novelli has written text for the Los Angeles Modern Dance and Ballet’s “Twelve Dancing Princesses” and her radio plays have been broadcast on the BBC and NPR. Her stage play, “The First Eff” (Mark Taper Forum) was excerpted in New Monologues For Women; By Women (Heinemann Press). She has won commissions and fellowships from the Manhattan Theater Club, ASCAP, Mabou Mines, Houston Grand Opera, the Rockefeller Foundation’s residency at Bellagio, Italy, the National Musical Theater Conference, the Mac Dowell Colony, the Atlantic Center for the Arts and Ucross. In addition, her work has been presented at the New York City Opera, Lyric Opera Cleveland, the Public Theater, Le Poisson Rouge and on several occasions at Joe’s Pub. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild and The Honor Roll. Besides teaching libretto writing and initiating a class in screenwriting in the Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, she was a visiting professor at Brown University, where she earned a master’s degree in playwriting studying with Paula Vogel. She was nominated for the David Payne Carter Teaching award by her graduate students at Tisch, April 2023.

Pronouns: She/They