Stephen Kitsakos

STEPHEN KITSAKOS is an opera librettist, author, and Executive Producer of the conversation series "Between Two Palms" at The Studios of Key West. His work in opera includes writing the libretto for "A Thousand Splendid Suns", adapted from the bestselling novel by Khaled Hosseini (Seattle Opera, Nominee Best New Opera World Premiere International Opera Awards), T"he Wooden Sword", and the opera cantata, "The White Rooster: A Tale of Compassion" for the Smithsonian, all with composer, Sheila Silver. With composer, Martin Hennessy, he wrote the libretto for the opera adaptation of Tomasz Jedrwoski’s modern LGBT classic, "Swimming in the Dark", in collaboration with the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, "The Pleasing Recollection", and the opera-theater monologues, "An Incident in Sutton Square" (Finalist 2023 National Opera Association Chamber Opera Prize), and "The Woman in Penthouse A". His work as an author includes the novel, "The Accidental Pilgrim" (ASD Publishing), and co-editor & contributing author, with Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, of "Key West Noir" for Akashic Books. He was a contributing writer for The Sondheim Review and ABC-CLIO’s Music in American Life.

He is the recipient of grants or commissions from the Seattle Opera, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Commission on the Arts, the Florida Council on the Arts, the Catskill Watershed Commission, the Episcopal Diocese of New York, the Community Foundation of the Florida Keys, the Jacobs School of Music, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, NYFA, the American Opera Project, the Rowe Foundation & the Majors Downs Fund. His Professional affiliations include Opera America and ASCAP. He is a member of the National Arts Club.

A graduate of New York University & the BMI Musical Theater Workshop, he was a member of the Theatre Arts Faculty at SUNY New Paltz in New York’s Hudson Valley from 1999-2013 teaching courses in performance & theater studies. He has also taught courses at The Studios of Key West, Shangtigar, Kripalu and UCLA Osher.