Photo by Peter W. Slattery
Cassandra Lewis is an award-winning writer. She has contributed to 10 books and several literary publications.
A Tin House Winter Workshop and Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference alum, her words have been published in the Modern Love Tiny Love Stories column of The New York Times, The Mail section of The New Yorker, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, Terrain.org, Broad Street Review, The Belladonna Comedy, Mutha Magazine, Dramatic Question, and NYC Playwrights.
She is a recipient of the PEN America / L'Engle Rahman Prize for Mentorship. Her memoir manuscript, The Biting Kind, made The Short List for the Santa Fe Writers Project (SFWP) Literary Awards, judged by author Deesha Philyaw. Forged Life, her fiction manuscript, was selected by Killer Nashville as a 2024 Claymore Award Top Pick. Her personal essay, "Mother's Day," will be included in the anthology, No Contact: 28 Writers on Family Estrangement, edited by Jenny Bartoy, forthcoming from Catapult in April 2026.
Cass was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship by the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. Other honors include an invitation to be a writer in residence at Can Serrat in Spain, a Participant Scholarship from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, a scholarship to attend Hippocampus Magazine’s Creative Nonfiction Conference, the Southampton Writers Conference Playwriting Award, and a Tribute from the State of Delaware General Assembly that “recognizes her exemplary talent and outstanding work in the theatre arena."
Her plays have been produced in London, Dublin, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and excerpts have been published in numerous Best of anthologies. She served as an adjudicator for the Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre and was shortlisted for the London-based Alpine Fellowship Theatre Prize.
Cass completed The University of Iowa's Irish Writing Program in Dublin, Ireland. She earned an MFA in Writing from New College of California and majored in Forensic Psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
Day jobs that have inspired and informed her writing include her work with individuals confined in a maximum-security prison, a Juilliard-trained movie actor, those in recovery, people experiencing housing insecurity, formerly incarcerated adults and youth, and other trauma survivors. She is a Writing Mentor for PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program and teaches creative writing at the Delaware Art Museum.
A Tin House Winter Workshop and Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference alum, her words have been published in the Modern Love Tiny Love Stories column of The New York Times, The Mail section of The New Yorker, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, Terrain.org, Broad Street Review, The Belladonna Comedy, Mutha Magazine, Dramatic Question, and NYC Playwrights.
She is a recipient of the PEN America / L'Engle Rahman Prize for Mentorship. Her memoir manuscript, The Biting Kind, made The Short List for the Santa Fe Writers Project (SFWP) Literary Awards, judged by author Deesha Philyaw. Forged Life, her fiction manuscript, was selected by Killer Nashville as a 2024 Claymore Award Top Pick. Her personal essay, "Mother's Day," will be included in the anthology, No Contact: 28 Writers on Family Estrangement, edited by Jenny Bartoy, forthcoming from Catapult in April 2026.
Cass was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship by the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. Other honors include an invitation to be a writer in residence at Can Serrat in Spain, a Participant Scholarship from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, a scholarship to attend Hippocampus Magazine’s Creative Nonfiction Conference, the Southampton Writers Conference Playwriting Award, and a Tribute from the State of Delaware General Assembly that “recognizes her exemplary talent and outstanding work in the theatre arena."
Her plays have been produced in London, Dublin, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and excerpts have been published in numerous Best of anthologies. She served as an adjudicator for the Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre and was shortlisted for the London-based Alpine Fellowship Theatre Prize.
Cass completed The University of Iowa's Irish Writing Program in Dublin, Ireland. She earned an MFA in Writing from New College of California and majored in Forensic Psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
Day jobs that have inspired and informed her writing include her work with individuals confined in a maximum-security prison, a Juilliard-trained movie actor, those in recovery, people experiencing housing insecurity, formerly incarcerated adults and youth, and other trauma survivors. She is a Writing Mentor for PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program and teaches creative writing at the Delaware Art Museum.