Who are America's hottest playwrights in 2016?

Martyna Majok

Her play "Cost of Living" sold out a trial run at the Williamstown Theatre Festival this past summer and is now moving to New York. She is working with Broadway director Kimberly Senior ("Disgraced") on her new play, "Queens," that will be developed at the center this fall.

Rhiana Yazzie

Not only a playwright but a leader in the field, Yazzie founded New Native Theatre, which is cultivating a cadre of playwrights, actors and theater professionals drawn from the American Indian community. She has been commissioned to write plays by a number of companies, including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Harrison David Rivers

The Columbia University graduate and Manhattan (Kansas) native came to the Twin Cities for a fellowship, and stayed. He's working on numerous commissions. His play "Sweet" will soon premiere at the National Black Festival in New York.

Carson Kreitzer

Kreitzer won a $10,000 grant named in honor of "Rent" composer and librettist Jonathan Larson for a new musical about Tamara de Lempicka, a Polish Art Deco painter and revolutionary described as the Madonna of her day. Kreitzer often tackles historic personages, including pioneering photographer Lee Miller ("Behind the Eye"), Wonder Woman ("Lasso of Truth") and the nuclear physicist known as the father of the atomic bomb ("The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer").

Aditi Brennan Kapil

Kapil has long called the Twin Cities home and has staged her epic Displaced Hindu Gods trilogy at Mixed Blood Theatre. But she's all over the country this season, with premieres at the Yale Repertory Theatre ("Imogen Says Nothing") and at Mixed Blood and South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, Calif. ("Orange").

ROHAN PRESTON