SHELBY SOLLA

(she/her/hers) is a playwright, librettist, and screenwriter based in Brooklyn, NY and originally from the greater Pittsburgh area. Shelby’s thematic interests converge at the intersection of queerness, fat liberation, and feminism from small villages in Medieval England to public school classrooms in the present-day. Her dramatic writing has been developed at the New Musicals Lab at the Ferguson Center, the Johnny Mercer Foundation Writers Grove at Goodspeed Musicals, New York Live Arts, Primary Stages, and Dixon Place.

1385, the pilot she co-wrote with T.J. Pieffer, was selected as a second-rounder for Austin Film Festival in 2021.

Most recently, Shelby’s brand new musical Salem, co-written with T.J. Pieffer with music and lyrics by Jennifer Lucy Cook, was a semi-finalist for the 2024 O’Neill Musical Theatre Conference and a finalist for the 2024 Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellowship. Salem was developed by the New Musicals Lab at the Ferguson Center in July of 2024 and received a 29-hour reading at Full Out Creative in NYC and is in development with Blair Russell Productions. You can hear a selection of songs from Salem on SoundCloud.

Shelby holds a B.A. in Writing for the Stage from Marymount Manhattan College.

Check out her profile on the New Play Exchange!