Leah Nanako Winkler was born to an American  father and Japanese mother in Kamakura, Japan. Her family eventually moved to Lexington, Kentucky . Leah attended college in Indianapolis, Indiana and  immediately after, she began assisting playwright and director Young Jean Lee and worked with her company until 2009.   Leah has directed her own plays with her theater company at the Ontological Hysteric Theater ( Pale Horse…6Speed-cowriter), The Brick Theater (Big Girls Club- Happy Dance Dance Princess Show, FLYING SNAKES IN 3-D!!!-cowritten with Teddy Nicholas), HERE Arts Center (The Formula Play), and  The Incubator Arts Project (THE INTERNET.), 3LD Technology Center ( DEAD PEOPLE cowritten with Teddy Nicholas ) and Ars Nova as well as  venues   in  Philly,  Florida and Indianapolis. Her short plays have been seen at Little Theatre at Dixon Place (DEAD PEOPLE-short version), Cultural Development Corporation’s Source Festival (little girls- dir Scott Fortier), HERE Arts Center (Bieber Bug, Dir. Shelley Butler), Workingman’s Clothes Productions’ Binge Festival (BGC-Dir.Teddy Nicholas) , Butler University (PEOPLE LIKE US) and Ensemble Studio Theater.  She was a 2008-2009 short form resident at the Ontological Hysteric Theater, a 2010-2011 member of Terra Nova Theater Collective’s Groundbreakers Playwright Group for her play Death For Sydney Black, which received a workshop in Feb 2011 at the Incubator Arts Project (dir. Mallory Catlett) and was presented at  the Thinking Cap Theatre in Florida November-December 2011.  She is a current member of Youngblood, a  founding member of the critically acclaimed Everywhere Theatre Group, and an affiliated artist at New Georges. In addition to her plays, Leah’s essays on hapa identity have been seen on Discover Nikkei through an A/P/A commission for the Japanese American National Museum in California. English is her second language.