Dan Bernitt is an American playwright, performer, and professor. His solo performances Yelling at Bananas in Whole Foods; Phi Alpha Gamma; and Thanks for the Scabies, Jerkface! have been presented in theatre festivals and performance series throughout the United States, as well as in Ireland and Italy. His work explores the charged spaces between silence and expression, secrecy and revelation, breaking and remaking.

Since 2004, his writing has been recognized with artist development grants from Kentucky Performing Arts in partnership with Toyota Manufacturing, an Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council, and a residency from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. He is a recipient of the Robert Chesley Award for Lesbian and Gay Playwriting, and his books Dose: Plays & Monologues and Phi Alpha Gamma were finalists for the Lambda Literary Award.

He holds an MFA in playwriting from The New School for Drama and a BA in arts administration from the University of Kentucky. Alongside a wide-ranging administrative career—including leadership roles in marketing, communications, publishing, project management, and human resources—he has taught creative writing at Amherst College and the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts.

Bernitt is a professor of literature and languages at Christian Brothers University and serves on the executive board of the Southern Literary Festival. He lives in Memphis, where he continues to develop new work across disciplines and genres.