Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko (pronouns: he/they/Nick) is a 3rd culture Tanzanian-American non-binary trans queer raised in East and central Africa living in the U.S. Nick was recently awarded the New Visions Fellowship for Black Gender Non-Conforming and Trans Playwrights by the Dramatist Guild of America and National Queer Theater. Residencies include: Nationally recognized and nominated Resident Playwright Initiative with Playwrights’ Foundation (San Francisco, CA 2019-2024); Resilience and Development (R&D) Writers’ Lab with Crowded Fire Theater Company in San Francisco (2017-2018); New York City’s EWG (Emerging Writers’ Group) at the Public Theater sponsored by Time Warner Co.; New York City’s Groundbreakers Group, Djerassi Artist Residency in northern California, and more. Nick is a 2018 finalist for Africa’s Gerald Kraak Award; a two-time recipient of the Creativity Fund issued by the Public Theater and Time Warner, and a 2017 Spring grantee of a Theatre Bay Area (TBA) Individual Artist Cash grant. Nick graduated Magna Cum Laude at Columbia University in New York City for undergraduate and completed an MFA at Columbia University as a Point Scholar, the nation’s largest LGBTQIA scholarship fund, and was awarded a Columbia University Fellowship for theater at the same time. Nick attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop thanks to a Norman Felton Fellowship. 

Nick’s plays include: Silence Is A Sound; Cock Tales for Christmas; 37, a Black lesbian duet set in prison; S.T.A.R: Marsha P. Johnson; queer trilogy bathed in queer African fantasia Waafrika 1-2-3; THEY/THEM/THEIRS; the queer apocalyptic Homeless in the AfterLife; Blueprint for an African Lesbian; SH/Ero; Asymmetrical We; Brotherly Love; Trailer Park Tundra; Once A Man Always A Man; Mama Afrika; Queering MacBeth; Life Is About the Kill; That Day God Visits You; Ata; To Dyke Trans; Gayze; Good Grief; Pence At The Border, and many more. XXY Queer Africa: More Invisible, a companion essay to WAAFRIKA 1-2-3 published in literary magazine Juked, was in Best American Essays 2020. Nick’s other essay, A Letter to My Gay Black Brother, was recently nominated for a 2021 Pushcart Award.