Biography
Tanya Barfield is an American playwright and television screenwriter. Born in San Francisco and raised in Portland, Oregon, she graduated from New York University and received an Artist Diploma from the Juilliard School Playwrights Program. She served as literary manager of the Juilliard Drama Division from 2009 to 2014 and is co-director of its Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program.
Her stage works include the plays Blue Door, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, Bright Half Life and The Call. She has received a Lilly Award, a Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights and a PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award.
Barfield began writing for television with season four of The Americans (2016), for which she shared a Writers Guild of America Award for Dramatic Series. She wrote the episode "Shirley" and served as producer on the 2020 limited series Mrs. America, sharing a further WGA Award for Long Form – Original.
