Laura Schellhardt is a Chicago based playwright and adapter. Her original works include Air Guitar High, Auctioning the Ainsleys, The Apothecary's Daughter, The K of D, Courting Vampires, and Shapeshifters, among many others. Adaptations include The Phantom Tollbooth, The Outfit, and Creole Folktales. She is also the author of Screenwriting for Dummies. She’s a two-time Jeff Award nominee and recipient of the AATE Distinguished Play Award, the New Play Frontier’s residency, the TCG National Playwriting Residency, the Jerome Fellowship, the New Play Award from ACT in Seattle, and a Dramatist Guild Playwriting Fellowship. She has participated in the SoHo Rep Writer/Director Lab, the Women Playwrights Festival at SRC, the Kennedy Center's New Voices/New Visions Festival, the Bonderman TYA Symposium, the Ojai New Play Conference, the Denver Center New Play Summit, the Bay Area Theatre Festival, and the O'Neill National Playwright's Festival, among others. She received her graduate degree from Brown University, under Paula Vogel. She’s a former Victory Gardens Resident Playwright and current member of Walkabout Playwrights Collective and she oversees the undergraduate play Schellhardt oversees the undergraduate playwriting program in the Department of Theatre at Northwestern University.