Tina Fakhrid-Deen is an award-winning professor and playwright, teaching artist, consultant, and LGBTQ family activist. Tina’s writing is a love letter to the hood which imbues her work. She writes about contemporary Black life through a ghetto kaleidoscope of connection, liberation, joy, resilience, and imagination.

Her Jeff-nominated play, Dandelions, premiered in 2023 through MPAACT at the Greenhouse Theater. Dandelions was commissioned for Theatre on the Lake: In the Works, and received a developmental production as part of their 2020 season. Tina’s 2023 Jeff-awarded play, Pulled Punches, was developed through the Women’s Theatre Alliance of Chicago and MacDowell, and premiered through MPAACT in 2022 at the Greenhouse Theater. In 2022, Tina won Definition Theater’s Amplify Two Series, a two-year play commission, for her satirical play, Black Bone. In 2021, Tina wrote and directed her first children’s podcast play, Sankofa: A Journey into Bronzeville’s Poppin’ Past for the Chicago Children’s Theatre and the Chicago Park District. She was also commissioned to write a short play, Snow Black, for Rivendell Theater’s 8:46 Breathing Room Festival. Her play, Powerless Gods, was developed and produced at Oakton Community College. Powerless Gods was a semi-finalist for the Bay Area Playwriting Festival (2019) and O’Neill Playwriting Conference (2016/2018) and is currently being adapted into a television series. Tina is finishing her first young adult novel, Where Pumas Go, and two television pilots, The Stacks and Hopewell Academy.

She is a 2024 Studios of Key West Artist, 2024 VCCA Fellow, 2022 Fulbright-Hays Seminar Fellow (Ghana/Togo), 2020 MacDowell Fellow, 2018 Kimbilio Fellow, and VONA Fellow in Fiction and Playwriting (2011/2017). In 2018, Tina won the Ray Hartstein Award for Outstanding Professional Excellence in Teaching for a full-time faculty member at Oakton Community College where she teaches composition, literature, and creative writing. Her essays, cultural commentary, and poetry have been published in anthologies and media outlets such as Without A Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class, Sometimes Rhythm, Sometimes Blues: Young African-Americans on Love, Relationships, Sex, and the Search for Mr. Right, My Soul to His Spirit: Soulful Expressions From Black Daughters To Their Fathers, Homegirls Make Some Noise: Hip-Hop Feminism Anthology, Families Like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell It Like It Is, The Root, NPR: Eight-Forty-Eight, News One/Amtrak, and The Laura Berman Show on Oprah Radio. She has also written and/or edited for Jet Magazine, Just For Us, Melanin Magazine, Mosaic, Project Oakton’s Voices, Venus Magazine, the Not For Tourists Guide to Chicago, Tidal Basin Review, and Scott Foresman.

Tina started the Chicago Chapter of COLAGE which she volunteer coordinated for seven years. Out of this experience, her first book was born. In 2010, Tina completed Let’s Get This Straight: The Ultimate Handbook for Youth with LGBTQ Parents (Seal Press). As a result of her activism, Tina won the Windy City Times 30 Under 30 Award (2003) and COLAGE’s Outstanding Achievement Award (2010).

She has worked in higher education, Federal TRIO Programs, alternative schools, social services, arts education, and college prep programs. Tina holds a Bachelor’s degree in Speech (Oral Interpretation/Performance Studies), a Master’s in Education (with an emphasis on Multicultural/Urban Education and Educational Policy) and an MFA in Creative Writing and Black Literature. Tina is a company member of MPAACT. She is the founder of the Butterfly Circle, a small Chicago-based women’s writing group that provides community and accountability for local Black playwrights. She is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators of Illinois and The Dramatists Guild.he is seeking a great literary manager who appreciates nuance and doesn’t want another one-trick pony. So if that’s you, get in touch.

She lives with her beautiful husband and extraordinary daughters in the heart of Chicago. A true Chicagoan, Tina craves Italian Ices (with lupini beans) and piddling around the magnificent lakefront which is arguably an inland freshwater sea. She’s a fiend for Nutella & raspberry crepes, white cake icing, and traveling to places where they don’t speak English, but not necessarily in that order. At any given moment, challenge her to a dance battle or an old school hip-hop rap battle and you will surely lose.

For more information about Let’s Get This Straight, author interviews, excerpts, and reviews, contact:
Andie East, Publicist
Seal Press
510.809.3872 / andie.east@perseusbooks.com

For all other inquiries, contact Tina directly at tinafakhriddeen@gmail.com.

Image above by Will Crawford, Art by Kossi Aguessy, Palaise de Lomé, Togo 2022