Velina Hasu Houston is Associate Professor and Director of the Playwriting Program in the School of Theatre at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. She is also an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and poet. Her work has been presented internationally at such venues as the Manhattan Theatre Club, Old Globe Theatre, a Contemporary Theatre, Syracuse Stage, Smithsonian Institute, Kennedy Center, and Japan Society. She  has written for film and television and her plays and critical essays are published in several anthologies. Her first anthology for Temple was The Politics of Life: Four Plays by Asian American Women.