Nicole Kempskie

Nicole Kempskie is an award-winning multidisciplinary writer, actor, and educator based on the East Coast.

Current acting credits include the Oscar-winning feature film American Fiction with Jeffrey Wright and Issa Rae.

Her musical Helen on 86th St., with composer Robby Stamper, premiered in New York City in 2011. The one-hour school edition is published and licensed through Playscripts, Inc., and has been performed across the country and internationally. She received a Stowe Story Labs Fellowship for the screenplay adaptation, an adaptation that has won and placed in numerous competitions, including the International Family Film Festival (Best Musical), International Screenwriter Association Fast Track Fellowship (Top 6), London Film Awards Screenplay Competition (Finalist), Inroads Screenwriting Fellowship (Finalist), and the Final Draft Big Break competition (Quarter-finalist).

Her work has been supported by fellowships, residencies, and mentorships with Stowe Story Labs, The Marble House Project, The Off-Broadway Alliance, and the Noepe Center for Literary Arts. She was awarded the Dennis Lehane Fiction Fellowship from the Solstice MFA and has been has been a finalist for the prestigious Kleban Prize for lyric writing.

In collaboration with Robby Stamper, she has written The Order of Things, It's About Time, and multiple children's musicals produced at Brooklyn Children's Theatre, which she co-founded and served as Artistic Director of from 2004-2011. She has published over fifty theater and film educational resource guides for Brooklyn Academy of Music and Lincoln Center Theater that include works by Beckett, Pinter, Odets, Ibsen, and Shakespeare.

Nicole has worked extensively as a teaching artist and professional actor, director, and choreographer in New York City and Boston. She holds a Master's degree from the Gallatin School of Individualized Studies at New York University, and a B.A. in Theater from Providence College.

Her web-based cartoon project, Dotty's Doodles, was a proud participant in 100 Days Action: an art and activism initiative committed to sustained engagement during Donald Trump's first 100 days in office. The project was featured in City on a Hill Press, and the cartoon "Fake News vs. Real News" is published by Oxford University Press in the “Digital Citizenship” chapter of the textbook, Introduction to Scholarship.