Michelle Kholos Brooks is an award-winning playwright. Her new play Hostage, based on a true story of a Midwestern mother who traveled to Tehran in 1979 to negotiate the release of her hostage son, was selected as a finalist for the 2016/17 Woodward/Newman Drama Award. Other plays include Hitler’s Tasters and Kalamazoo. On the episode, she talks candidly about why she writes, how she comes up with ideas, and what it was like meeting the real-life version of one of her characters.