Janine Nabers facts for kids

Janine Nabers is an American writer who creates plays for the theater and scripts for television shows. She is known for telling powerful stories that often explore important social topics.

Early Life and Education

Janine Nabers was born in Houston, Texas. Her parents are Janet and Cornelius Nabers. She went to Alief Elsik High School in Houston.

Janine studied theater at Ithaca College, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. She then went on to get a Master of Fine Arts degree in playwriting from The New School. She also studied at the Juilliard School in New York City, which is a famous school for performing arts.

Career in Writing

Theater Plays

Janine Nabers first wanted to be an actress on stage. However, she noticed there weren't many roles for Black actors in plays. This inspired her to start writing her own plays instead.

While she was at Juilliard, her play Annie Bosh is Missing was recognized as a finalist for a major playwriting competition in 2013. This play tells the story of a young woman named Annie Bosh who faces many challenges in Houston after Hurricane Katrina. The play was first performed at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 2013.

Another one of Janine's plays, Serial Black Face, won the Yale Drama Series prize in 2014. This play is about a mother dealing with her son's disappearance during a difficult time in Atlanta, Georgia, when many children went missing. Winning this award meant the play was published by Yale University Press. Serial Black Face was first performed in Atlanta in 2016.

Janine has written other plays too. These include A Swell in the Ground, which premiered in Chicago, Illinois in 2017. She also wrote Welcome to Jesus, which was first shown in Chicago in 2017. Other plays she wrote are Juniper; Jubilee and The Peterson Show.

Television Shows

Janine Nabers has also written for many popular television shows. She worked on Bravo's first scripted series, Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce. She also wrote for Lifetime's UnREAL and AMC's Dietland.

She was a Supervising Producer for the first two episodes of HBO's hit show Watchmen. She was also a Co-Executive Producer on Netflix's space drama Away. Janine was a writer for the third season of the award-winning show Atlanta.

In 2021, Janine signed a special agreement with Amazon Studios to create more shows. In 2023, a new series called Swarm was released on Amazon’s Prime Video. Janine co-created this show with Donald Glover.

Awards and Recognition

Janine Nabers has received many honors and awards for her writing. In 2011, she won the Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship. The next year, she was named a Playwriting Fellow by the New York Theatre Workshop.

She won the New York Foundation for the Arts Playwriting fellowship in 2013. She was also the AETNA Playwriting Fellow at Hartford Stage from 2013 to 2014.

Janine has been part of many important writing programs and groups. These include the Ars Nova Play Group, the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, and the Dramatists Guild Playwriting Fellowship. She also attended the MacDowell Colony Fellowship and the Sundance Theatre Labs in 2010 and 2011.

In 2018, she won the Fadiman Playwriting Award for her play The Peterson Show. This was part of her participation in the LA Writers' Workshop at Center Theater Group.

As a supervising producer for HBO's Watchmen, Janine was nominated for Writers Guild of America Awards for Best New Series and Best Drama Series. She won the Best New Series award in 2020.

Works

Plays for Theater

• Juniper; Jubilee
• Annie Bosh is Missing
• Serial Black Face
• A Swell in the Ground
• Welcome to Jesus
• The Peterson Show

Television Shows