From writing captivating characters and storylines for film and television, to delving into complex relationships of everyday people brought to life on stage, award winning writer Hilary Bettis has quickly become a force in the entertainment industry.
In 2020 Bettis’ play 72 miles to go... will be brought to life off-Broadway with the Roundabout Theatre Company at the Laura Pels Theatre, opening on March 10. The play, which was a recipient of the 2019 Egerton Foundation New Play Awards, National Endowment for the Arts Grant, and a finalist for the prestigious Blackburn Prize, follows the world of distance that separates a mother at a shelter and her American-born husband and children.
In television Bettis was nominated for (2018) and won the 2019 Writer’s Guild of America Award for her work on the critically acclaimed, Golden Globe and Emmy Award winning FX series “The Americans.” She joined the writers room throughout seasons five and six, and was hired from one of her plays that was sent in as a sample of her work. Bettis is an alumni of the highly-competitive Sundance Institute Episodic TV Lab, has developed and sold multiple original television series and is developing original pilots for AMC, Hulu, and PatMa. She wrote for the Hulu miniseries “The Dropout,” starring Kate McKinnon (summer 2020), and is currently writing for Amazon's "Rodeo Queens" starring Dakota Johnson and Fred Armisen.
On the film front Bettis has written and produced four short films, “B’Hurst” and “The Iron Warehouse” have screened at multiple film festivals across the globe. “Amarillo by Morning” and “Connor”, which she directed both, are currently in post-production.
Bettis is a graduate of the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwright Fellowship at The Juilliard School. She has received fellowships, workshops, and residencies at the Roundabout, Alley All New Festival, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, New York Theatre Workshop, La Jolla Playhouse, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, New Georges, amongst many others.
Additional accolades include having plays recognized by The Kilroys every year since its inception, being a runner-up for the Alliance Theatre’s Kendeda Award, Nuestras Voces National Playwriting Competition, American Blues Theater’s Blue Ink Award, New America Fellowship, and the Leah Ryan Prize. Bettis is a member of the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group at Primary Stages, Ensemble Studio Theater, a Usual Suspect at NYTW, an Affiliated Artist at New Georges, The Kilroys, and a proud member of the WGA.
In theatre, Bettis’ play “The Ghosts of Lote Bravo” received a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere at the Unicorn Theatre in Kansas City, MO, and Borderlands Theater in Tucson, Arizona. The play was published in American Theatre Magazine in February 2018 with stills from the production on the cover. Her play, “Alligator,” was produced Off-Broadway with New Georges and The Sol Project, and was nominated for a 2017 Drama Desk for Outstanding Music in a Play. “Queen of Basel,” a bilingual adaptation of Miss Julie commissioned by Miami New Drama, was produced at Miami New Drama in April 2018 and Studio Theatre in D.C. March 2019, to critical acclaim.
Bettis currently lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, and rides horses in her free time.
