LyaNisha Gonzalez is a Ph.D. Fine Arts Candidate in The School of Theatre and Dance at Texas Tech University and her dissertation, Defying the Crooked Room: An Autoethnographic Study on Playwriting that Works Toward a Black Womanist Aesthetic in Theatre, centers the ways in which Black female playwrights revolutionize theatrical spaces by virtue of the works, which demonstrate their unapologetic reclamations of the Black female identity—essentially a reshaping of what it means to be both Black and female within an industry that deny the existence of both. Her research employs Black Feminism, Womanism (as established by Alice Walker), and Critical Race Theory, with explorations of Afrofuturism, as ways of advancing Black female voices within the discipline of theatre. LyaNisha received her B.A. in Drama from Spelman College in Atlanta, GA and her M.F.A. in Acting from The Actor’s Studio Drama School in New York City. Her plays have received Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway productions, including the FringeNYC Festival, The Producer’s Club, and the 44th Annual Samuel French Off-Off-Broadway Short Play Festival in August 2019. Her play Black Girl, Interrupted went on to receive national recognition at The Kennedy Center for American College Theatre Festival; receiving second place for the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, and Distinguished Achievement for the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award.