Achiro Patricia Olwoch is an award-winning writer, director, and producer from Gulu in Northern Uganda, currently living in exile in New York. She is a Visiting Scholar and Instructor at Vassar College, teaching playwriting and postcolonial drama. A former Weiss International Fellow and Scholar at Risk at Barnard College (2023-2024), Achiro has received numerous accolades for her groundbreaking work, including the TV series Coffee Shop and Yat Madit, and acclaimed short films like The Surrogate.
Her creative work bridges history and contemporary struggle. She recently completed three manuscripts left unfinished by her late father and is now working on a memoir about her life from exile to war and a novel about a former child soldier navigating Uganda’s anti-homosexuality law. Her writing has appeared in Guernica, Pen America, and Adi Magazine. Her play, The Survival, premiered at Lincoln Center (2022) and returned for a full production at the Perelman Performing Arts Center (2024). She serves as the African Representative on the Women Playwrights International Management Committee and is a member of the National Queer Theatre’s Artistic Collective.