Paula Cizmar is a multi-genre writer—award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and journalist—whose work merges an uncompromising view of  social politics with a poetic sensibility and a great deal of humor.   Her essays and articles have appeared in magazines, journals, newspapers, and on the internet.  Her plays have been produced off-Broadway, in London, and in regional theatres from Maine to California including Portland Stage Company, The Women’s Project, American Place Theatre, San Diego Rep, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Playwrights Arena, The Jungle Theatre (Minneapolis), West Coast Ensemble, and (short plays) at Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Echo, and Circle Rep West. She has been artist-in-residence at numerous venues including Skidmore College and Portland Stage.  Among her plays are: Candy & Shelley Go to the Desert, Still Life with Parrot & Monkey, The Death of a Miner, Love Song for the Woman Whose Child Shot My Son, Boodaboy, Bone Dry (AKA The Copy Editor Murders), and Street Stories, winner of two Ovation Awards. As a screenwriter, she has had many projects in development in Hollywood, and she was a staff writer for two seasons on the PBS series “American Family,” starring Edward James Olmos.  

Also an educator, Paula Cizmar is an adjunct professor at the USC School of Theatre and teaches the Master Class in Screenwriting at UCLA Extension Writers Program as well as classes for Cuesta College’s Emeritus College.

She is a freelance editor, story analyst, and consultant with major publishing and entertainment industry clients.  (For more info, go to CONSULT on this website.)

Her most recent work includes Venus in Orange, a performance piece written with Laura Shamas, and Seven, a play written with the writers of Many Shining Lights, Inc. (Paula Cizmar, Catherine Filloux, Gail Kriegel, Carol Mack, Ruth Margraff, Anna Deavere Smith, and Susan Yankowitz), and sponsored by Vital Voices, a foundation devoted to the international struggle for human rights.   (For more info, go to RECENT AND UPCOMING on this website.)  She is currently doing a film adaptation of Julie Jensen’s play Two-Headed and writing a book entitled In a Blue Moon.

She lives on the Central Coast of California with her husband, writer/musician/paramedic Daniel Cariaga, and their Labrador retrievers, Bruno and Oscar.