Andrew Simonet-
I am a writer and choreographer in Philadelphia. My debut young adult novel, Wilder, will be published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in 2018. I wrote Making Your Life as an Artist, an open source guide to living as an artist. From 1993 to 2013, I co-directed Headlong Dance Theater, creating dances like CELL (a journey for one audience member guided by your cell phone), and This Town is a Mystery (dances by four Philadelphia families in their homes). In 2006, I founded Artists U, an incubator for helping artists make sustainable lives with programs in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and South Carolina. I have received a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, an Independence Fellowship in the Arts, a Bessie for Choreography at the New York Dance and Performance Awards, nd residencies at Yaddo, Ucross, and Hambidge. My performance work has been supported by The Creative Capital Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Pew Trusts, Rockefeller Foundation, Japan Foundation, and New England Foundation for the Arts, and produced by Dance Theater Workshop (NYC), The Kyoto Art Center, P.S. 122 (NYC), Central Park Summerstage, The Jade Festival (Tokyo), The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. I began writing fiction in 2004; in 2013, I left my dance company to focus on writing. In 2017, I obtained representation with Rebecca Stead at The Book Group and a two-book deal with Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
