David Henry Hwang (born August 11, 1957) is an American playwright, librettist, screenwriter, and theater professor at Columbia University in New York City.

He received a bachelor's degree in English from Stanford University in 1979 and attended the Yale School of Drama between 1980 and 1981, taking literature classes.

[3] In summer 1978, he studied playwriting with Sam Shepard and attended Padua Hills Playwrights Festival, both of which led him to write his first plays such as FOB.

"[9] After this, Papp also produced the show Sound and Beauty, the omnibus title to two Hwang one-act plays set in Japan.

The success of M. Butterfly prompted Hwang's interests in many other different directions, including work for opera, film, and the musical theatre.

[15] Hwang wrote an early draft of a screenplay based upon A. S. Byatt's Booker Prize-winning novel Possession, which was originally scheduled to be directed by Sydney Pollack.

[16] Throughout the 1990s, Hwang continued to write for the stage, including short plays for the famed Humana Festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville.

He was asked by director Robert Falls to help co-write the book for the musical Aida (based upon the opera by Giuseppe Verdi).

[18] His next project was a radical revision of Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, II, and Joseph Fields' musical Flower Drum Song.

The Civil Rights Movement and other cultural changes had disrupted continuing stereotypical portrayals of Asian American communities[citation needed].

It was adapted from the novel The Flower Drum Song by C. Y. Lee, and tells the culture clash encountered by a Chinese family living in San Francisco.

[20] The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization allowed Hwang to significantly rework the plot, while retaining character names and songs.

[22] In Yellow Face, Hwang wrote a semi-autobiographical play, featuring him as the main character in a media farce about mistaken racial identity.

[22] Yellow Face premiered in Los Angeles in 2007 at the Mark Taper Forum as a co-production with East West Players.

It moved Off-Broadway to the Joseph Papp Public Theater, an important venue for Hwang's earlier work.

[25] Hwang wrote the libretto to Howard Shore's opera The Fly, based on David Cronenberg's 1986 film of the same name.

The opera premiered on July 2, 2008, at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, France, with Cronenberg as director and Plácido Domingo conducting.

[26] Hwang wrote the libretto for Tarzan, a musical based on a film by Walt Disney Pictures, which was produced on Broadway.

[27] Hwang also collaborated on the multi-media event Icarus at the Edge of Time, adapted from Brian Greene's novel of the same name.

[28] After its major success at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, Hwang's play, Chinglish, quickly made its way to Broadway in October 2011.

Chinglish was largely inspired by Hwang's frequent visits to China and his observations of interactions between Chinese and American people.

The play opened February 24, 2014 in a production directed by Leigh Silverman, and featuring Cole Horibe, who had gained fame in the TV series, So You Think You Can Dance.

Conceived by Ed Sylvanus Iskander, The Mysteries also featured the work of playwrights Craig Lucas, Dael Orlandersmith, Jose Rivera, and Jeff Whitty.

"[35] In 2016, Hwang became a writer and consulting producer of the Golden Globe-winning television series The Affair[36] and in 1993 wrote a song "Solo" in association with Prince.

[59] In 1989, Hwang's father hired then-Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley as a consultant who received a loan from the bank, helping it secure $2 million from city funds.