Collin Van Son is a Denver-based playwright, poet, and essayist. His full-length plays include Natural History, which was featured at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's 2023 National Playwrights Conference and was a 2025 Princess Grace Award semifinalist; Two-Man Rule, which was featured at New Art City Theatre's Festival '25 and was a 2021 Eugene O'Neill finalist; and TARVA, whose world premiere he directed at Penn State University in 2018. His one-act plays include Disavow, which was featured at the 2024 Southeast Texas Festival of New Plays; Professor Eric's Science Spectacular, which earned first prize at the 2018 Tell Me a Story playwriting competition; and Moreland & Halifax: Well-Read Detectives, which has received student productions in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. He is a former fellow of the STAGE (Scientists, Technologists, and Artists Generating Exploration) Lab at the University of Chicago, where he developed new works of science-inspired theatre, including his one-act play Præy for the Mantis. His poetry chapbook How to Draw a Blank was published by Cathexis Northwest Press in 2020. His poetry has also appeared in San Pedro River Review, The Normal School, antilang., and Typishly. For his essay “Dispatch from a nuclear petting zoo,” he was awarded the 2024 Leonard M. Rieser Award from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. More on his work at www.collinvanson.com.
