Makeda D. Declet

Makeda D. Declet [she/her] is a Guyanese-American playwright, TV writer, and award-nominated actor. She is a current semi-finalist for the 2025 O'Neill Playwrights' Conference. Her play, DARLINGS, was a 2024 Honorable Mention for the Leah Playwriting Prize and she is a 2019 HBO All-Access finalist. Makeda served as a writer in the mini-room for the FX television show, Suckhole. Her stage plays include SERVICE/PLAY (EST/LA, Los Angeles and The Understudy, Chicago); Issa Was Here (Perceptions Theatre, Chicago and Runaways Lab Theater, Chicago); Hammer (The Belfry Stage, Los Angeles); Camp (MeetCute, Los Angeles); and FKA Gold is Deep (Ethel M. Barber Theater, Northwestern University, Chicago). Development programs include EST/LA’s New West Playwrights Under 30 (Los Angeles), Moving Arts’ MadLab development program (Los Angeles), and Mara Brock Akil’s Story 27 Writers’ Colony (Los Angeles). She is a member of SAG-AFTRA, AEA, EST/LA and Echo Theater Company. Makeda holds a BFA in Experimental Theater from NYU and an MFA in Writing for the Screen and Stage from Northwestern University, where she studied under the tutelage of Erin Courtney and Thomas Bradshaw (playwriting), Tracey Scott Wilson and Zayd Dohrn (TV writing), and Felicia D. Henderson (showrunning).

Makeda grew up in Brooklyn, NY and now splits her time between Chicago and Los Angeles.