Mark E. Leib is, among other things, a playwright that has been producing plays that have been on stages throughout the nation since the 1980. Leib's plays and adaptations have been produced at the Players Theatre in Greenwich Village (Art People), the Manhattan Punch Line (Terry by Terry), the American Repertory Theatre (Terry by Terry and adaptations of The Marriage of Figaro, and Platonov) and at the Edinburgh and Singapore Theatre Festivals. His play The Return to Zion was chosen for a staged reading at the Southern New Plays Festival at New Orleans’ Southern Rep, and his play Tongue was a winner in the short play festival at Florida Studio Theatre. Leib was the first playwriting lecturer at the Institute for Advanced Theatre Study at Harvard University, and taught playwriting and various drama survey courses for Harvard Extension School from 1981-1990. He received his BA in Government magna cum laude from Harvard College, where he was president and poetry editor of the literary magazine The Harvard Advocate, and his MFA in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama, where he won the CBS Foundation Prize in Playwriting. He now teaches playwriting, screenwriting, and fiction at the University of South Florida. Mark also worked as a theater critic for Creative Loafing in Tampa Bay and Sarasota for more than a decade beginning in 1998. His criticism won six awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, including two first-place statewide Sunshine State Awards for Critical Writing.

This year Mark has a new play and a novel both coming out. Jon and Mark discuss both the play and the novel, among so many other fascinating topics in this conversation. Please enjoy!