Janine Nabers is an American playwright and television writer.
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Early life
Nabers was born in Houston, Texas to Janet and Cornelius Nabers. She attended Alief Elsik High School in Houston. Nabers has a BA in theater from Ithaca College and an MFA in playwriting from The New School. She is also a graduate of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at the Juilliard School in New York City.
Career
Theater
Nabers was initially interested in becoming a stage actress but her frustration with the lack of Black roles in plays encouraged her to try playwriting instead. In 2011, she was Page 73's Playwriting Fellow and was named New York Theatre Workshop Playwriting Fellow the following year. As a student at Juilliard, her play Annie Bosh is Missing was chosen as a finalist for the 2012-2013 Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition. Annie Bosh is Missing follows 22-year-old drug addict Annie Bosh who wanders the tumultuous streets of Houston after Hurricane Katrina. The play premiered at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 2013. In 2013, Nabers was the New York Foundation for the Arts Playwriting fellowship
For 2013-2014, Nabers was the AETNA Playwriting Fellow at Hartford Stage. Nabers' play, Serial Black Face, about a single mother coping with the disappearance of her son during the Atlanta child murders, won the 2014 Yale Drama Series prize. The award included publication by the Yale University Press. Serial Black Face had its world premiere at the Actor's Express Theatre Company in Atlanta, Georgia in 2016.
Nabers' other works include A Swell in the Ground, which premiered at the Gift Theatre in Chicago, Illinois in 2017 and Welcome to Jesus, which premiered at The American Theater Company in Chicago in 2017, Juniper; Jubilee and The Peterson Show.
Nabers is an alumna of the Ars Nova Play Group, the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, the Dramatists Guild Playwriting Fellowship, the MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and the 2010 and 2011 Sundance Theatre Labs. She is also a member of the MCC Playwrights Coalition and the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group at Primary Stages.
Television
Nabers' television writing credits include Bravo's first scripted series Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce, Lifetime's UnREAL and AMC's Dietland. She is credited as Supervising Producer on the first and second episodes of HBO's Watchmen, winning a Writers Guild Award in 2020. and was Co-Executive Producer on Netflix's Away. Nabers was a writer on the third season of Atlanta, winning a Peabody Award. In 2021, she signed an overall deal with Amazon Studios. In 2023, Swarm, the series Nabers co-created with Donald Glover, was released on Amazon’s Prime Video. In 2024, Nabers won a NAACP Image Award for Best Limited Series and was nominated for her first Emmy for Best Writing for Limited Series.
Deadline reported that Nabers is in development on her third project for Amazon, a collaboration with Mattel, on a live action Shani Girl series, with Nabers as showrunner.
Works
Theatre
Juniper; Jubilee
Annie Bosh is Missing
Serial Black Face
A Swell in the Ground
Welcome to Jesus
The Peterson Show
Selected works
Nabers, Janine. "Juniper; Jubilee." Off Off Broadway Festival Plays, 33rd Series, edited by Thomas C. Dunn. New York: Samuel French, 2008 ISBN 9780573670367
Nabers, Janine. Letters to Kurt, Playscripts Incorporated, 2012 ISBN 9781623844172
Nabers, Janine. Decade: Twenty New Plays about 9/11 and Its Legacy, edited by Samual Adamson, London: Nick Hern Books, 2012 ISBN 9781848422308
Nabers, Janine. Serial Black Face. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015 ISBN 0300211376
Nabers, Janine. "Serial Black Face." The Kilroys List: 97 Monologues and Scenes by Female and Trans Playwrights. Volume One, edited by Annah Feinberg for The Kilroys, New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2017 ISBN 9781559365352