KJ Moran Velz is a Boston-born playwright, pre-licensed drama therapist, and educator now based in Alexandria, Virginia. Her work has been performed at Signature Theatre, the Kennedy Center, Imagination Stage, NextStop Theatre, Flying V, Adventure Theatre MTC, Theater Alliance, and Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. She is the two-time recepient of the Donn B. Murphy One-Act Playwriting Award at Georgetown University, and her most recent play - Mother Mary - has been nominated for five Elliot Norton Awards, including Outstanding Play and Outstanding New Script. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild and the Woolly Mammoth Playwrights Group. 

Much of her work - both clinical and artistic - focuses on the intersections of language, religion, race, and ethnicity, including her current projects: 

• A Christmas Parol - her latest collaboration with lyricist and composer Sally Imbriano - which follows Angeles O’Shea-Reyes, a 12 year-old basketball star wrestling with identity and grief in this new TYA Filipino-Irish musical.

• Thin Places, a new horror-comedy about a drama therapist who is haunted by her ancestors, ex-girlfriend, and husband for taking on a contract with ICE.