Deborah Zoe Laufer is a 2009 recipient of the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award and a 2010 recipient of a Lilly Award.  Her play, Sirens premiered at The Actor’s Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival in February 2010.  Her newest play, Leveling Up, was workshopped at The Missoula Colony in July 2010 and will be part of Florida Stage – Stage 1 Festival in February 2011.

Three of Deborah’s play’s premiered at Florida Stage:  The Last Schwartz (Carbonell nomination for Best New Work), The Gulf of Westchester(Florida Stage/NNPN commission), and End Days (NNPN Rolling World Premiere).

End Days was awarded The American Theatre Critics Association Steinberg citation in March, 2008. It received its NYC premiere at Ensemble Studio Theatre in March 2009 through an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant and has received over twenty productions. It has been translated to German and will be performed in Halberstadt, Germany in March 2011. End Days is listed in the Burns Mantle Yearbook as one of the best regional plays of 2008, and published by Smith and Kraus in The Best Plays of 2008.

Out of Sterno received its world premiere at Portland Stage in ME in March of 2009 with a grant from the Edgerton Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Fortune premiered at The Marin Theatre Company in January 2005

The acting editions of End Days, The Last Schwartz, and Out of Sterno are published by Samuel French, which will soon release Sirens. The Last Schwartz was published by Smith and Kraus in Women Playwrights, the Best Plays of 2003. It enjoyed a six-month run at The Zephyr Theatre in Los Angeles, CA.

Deborah is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where she was also a Playwright-in-Residence.

Deborah was one of six playwrights commissioned in 2009 by Actors Theatre of Louisville to write Brink, for their Apprentice company. Other short works: The Record, commissioned for Juilliard's Centennial celebration (published by Smith and Kraus in The Best 10 Minute Plays of 2005), Saturday, produced in 2005 in the City Theatre's Summer Shorts Festival, The Prom, produced in 2003 by City Theatre's Short Cuts School Tour.

Deborah is a two-time recipient of the LeCompte du Nouy grant from The Lincoln Center Foundation. Her plays have been developed at The Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference, Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Ojai Playwrights Conference, The Missoula Colony, The Cherry Lane Alternative, The Dramatists Guild Fellowship Program, New Georges, The Lark Play Development Center and Geva Theatre Center. She is a member of The Dramatists Guild and is currently in her first year of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop as a lyricist, which thrills her to pieces.