Tegan McLeod was born in Iowa city, Iowa. She identifies as a woman, with Jewish and Romani ancestry. Early in life, she moved to the UK where she went on to study English Literature at Oxford University. She began acting in the National Youth Theatre and her first play Never Such Rain (written at age 18) was a runner-up in the Oxford New Writer’s Festival. Upon graduating, Tegan became one of only two playwrights, internationally, to be awarded a full scholarship to the University of Texas at Austin as a Michener Fellow in Playwriting and Screenwriting in 2013. At UT she had numerous productions, including a world-premiere of her first opera, produced in The New Works Festival, and entitled Rose Made Man; an opera about Trans identity. Her play Girls in Cars Underwater was developed at Center Stage in Baltimore, featured in the Ignition Festival at Victory Gardens, Chicago 2016 and was selected for the 2016 Eugene O’Neill Theater Center: National Playwrights Conference. Her pilot The Throwaways was a semi-finalist in the Austin Revolution Film Festival TV script competition (2017). In 2018 Lover Think Lover was included in The New Group’s Spring Reading Festival and her newest play Lunatic 19’s: A Deportational Road Trip was runner-up for the prestigious Papatango Prize in the UK. Recently the TV script NativeLand became a Second-Rounder in Austin Film Fest’s Drama Pilot presented by AMC 2019 and a WeScreenplay TV contest Quarterfinalist (2020). The world premiere of Lunatic 19’s: A Deportational Road Trip debuted at The Finborough Theatre, London, in July 2019 and received 4*’s from The Guardian: “This is powerful drama”. In 2021, her play Lover Think Lover was a National Playwrights Conference finalist and her pilot NativeLand became a finalist for the Los Angeles International Screenplay Awards. In 2022, Nativeland was recognized as a quarterfinalist in the Atlanta Film Festival Screenplay Competition and ScreenCraft TV Pilot Script Competition. She is currently working on a commission for Friends Of The Drama Center, in London.
playwright – screenwriter
