BIOGRAPHY

ROBERT B. VELLANI was awarded a Donald Barthelme Memorial Fellowship in Fiction for 1996 from Imprint, Inc. The award is given in conjunction with the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston, Texas where he is currently enrolled as an MFA candidate in Fiction. In conjunction with his work in the CWP, Mr. Vellani has also studied in the University of Houston’s School of Drama with Edward Albee and Jose Quintero.

As a dramatic writer, Mr. Vellani is the author of 1142 Harcourt Lane and Ya Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya, both directed by the author in New York City.   Additionally, Mr. Vellani has adapted these full-length plays into screenplays. Other works include writing, directing and producing two short films, Enough of This Summer Stuff and Forming Crystal. Along with  J. Todd Hays, Mr. Vellani wrote feature-length screenplays, On-Line and A Charmed Life. His latest play, This Dark County, has been recently submitted to the 1999 Chesterfield Writers Project Competition.

As an actor, Mr. Vellani has appeared with the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, Primary Stages, and at New Dramatists in New York City, as well as the Theatre de Jeune Lune, Mixed Blood, Penumbra Theater all of Minneapolis/St. Paul, and The Edward Albee Play Workshop in Houston, among others.

During ten years in New York City, Mr. Vellani studied acting with Richard Pinter at the Neighborhood Playhouse and with Paul Sills; film making at the School of Visual Arts, and playwriting with Eduardo Machado at Columbia University. As the recipient of the JR Humphries Writing Program Fellowship in 1995 and a Cornell Woolrich Fellowship in 1996 at the Columbia University Writing Program, Mr. Vellani studied with playwright Robert Montgomery.

In addition to winning the Barthelme Imprint Fellowship, Mr. Vellani’s short story Scarlet Begonias and Pink Magnolias was nominated by the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program for the Scribner’s Best of Writing Program Anthology, 1998. His screenplay On-Line was a semi-finalist in the 1998 Chesterfield Writers Project Competition.

Currently, Mr. Vellani recently finished a screen adaptation of William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, and is currently at work on a novel.

Robert was born in Columbus, Ohio.