2023-24 Writer in Residence

Quan Barry


We are thrilled to have poet, author, and playwright Quan Barry continue as our Writer in Residence for the 2023-24 season. Quan is nationally acclaimed for her fiction and poetry, and her play The Mytilenean Debate premiered at FTC in February 2022.

Quan is the Lorraine Hansberry Professor of English at the UW-Madison.

Above photo by Jim Barnard.

Exciting News:


THE LATEST: Barry's latest novel, When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East is getting rave reviews, called "...a dazzling achievement" in the New York Times!

Twin Brothers on a Quest to Find the Next Dalai Lama
- By Molly Young | The New York Times

Time Magazine's 10 New Books You Should Read in February List
- By Angela Haupt | Time Magazine



About Quan Barry:


Born in Saigon and raised on Boston’s northshore, Quan Barry is the Lorraine Hansberry Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Barry is the author of six books of fiction and poetry, including the recent novel We Ride Upon Sticks, which O: Oprah Magazine describes as, “Spellbinding, wickedly fun.” The New York Times described her previous work, She Weeps Each Time You’re Born, as “deeply affecting.” Her third novel, When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East, follows a group of Buddhist monks as they search for a reincarnation in the vast Mongolian landscape; When I’m Gone... will be published in February 2022. Barry is also one of a select group of writers to receive NEA fellowships in both poetry and fiction. In 2021, she was awarded the American Library Association’s Alex Award.

In 2012, Barry was commissioned to write a ten-minute piece for Book Wings, an arts exchange established by President Obama and then President Dmitry Medvedev and funded by the Bureau of Cultural and Educational Affairs at the U.S. State Department. Three Variations on a Theme was performed and broadcast simultaneously at the University of Iowa and the Moscow Art Theatre, the same space where Chekov premiered much of his work. Quan is excited and honored to serve as Forward Theater’s first Writer-in-Residence. In addition to gaining more experience and knowledge of theatrical practices, she also hopes to write and develop a play that explores the ethics of artificial intelligence.

Interviews, Features, & Essays


Six Things I Learned from Being a Multi-Hyphenate Writer
- By Quan Barry | LitHub

A 'restless writer,' Quan Barry enters the world of theater
- By Gayle Worland | Wisconsin State Journal

World traveling UW-Madison professor shares a new novel and play
- By Gena Kittner | Wisconsin State Journal