Samuel D. Hunter grew up in Moscow, Idaho and lives in New York City with his husband and daughter. His full-length plays include The Whale (Drama Desk Award, Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, GLAAD Media Award, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play), A Case for the Existence of God (New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play, Hull-Warriner Award), A Bright New Boise (Obie Award, Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), Greater Clements (Drama Desk nomination for Best Play, Outer Critics Circle Honoree), Lewiston/Clarkston (Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), The Few, A Great Wilderness, Rest, Pocatello, The Healing and The Harvest, among others.

His screenplay adaptation of The Whale, directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Brendan Fraser, was nominated for the 2023 BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and received two Oscars, including Best Actor. He was also a writer and producer on all four seasons of FX’s Baskets.

He is the recipient of a 2014 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, a 2012 Whiting Writers Award and an honorary doctorate from the University of Idaho. His work has been produced off-Broadway in New York City by Lincoln Center Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, LCT3, Signature Theatre, Page 73 Productions, Clubbed Thumb and Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre. Elsewhere, his work has been produced by Theatre Royal Bath, Theatre Rotterdam, Dallas Theatre Center, Seattle Rep, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, South Coast Rep and Victory Gardens, among others.

Two published anthologies of his work are available from TCG Books, and two more are forthcoming. He is a current Resident Playwright at the Signature Theatre in New York City and he serves on the executive board for the Dramatists Guild of America. He holds degrees in playwriting from NYU, The Iowa Playwrights Workshop and Juilliard.