Paula Anne Vogel was born on November 16, 1951, in Washington, D.C., and lived there throughout most of her early life. She attended Bryn Mawr College on a scholarship in 1969 and then went back to Washington, where she attended Catholic University of America, earning her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1974. She went to graduate school at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, earning enough credits for a Ph.D. but leaving with an A.B.D. in 1977 after failing to submit her thesis. From 1979 to 1982, she was a lecturer in Women's Studies and Theater Arts at Cornell; she was fired in 1982 for political reasons. Leaving Cornell gave her time to work on theater projects including guest lectureships at McGill University and University of Alaska. In 1984, she took a position as the director of the graduate playwriting program at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where she stayed...