Paul Calandrino is an award-winning Northwest playwright and actor. His full-length play The Final Leg won the Northwest Playwrights Festival and the Lakewood Theatre Playwriting Competition, both in 2005. Other full-length plays include I Hear America Barking (runner-up in the Lakewood Theatre competition in 2007), and The Nincompoop. He is currently at work on a historical drama concerning two key figures in Kenya’s struggle for independence.

Paul's ten-minute plays include “Bring Me the Head of Dufresne Fish” and “Cubism,” both of which were published in Northwest Review. The former was nominated for the prestigious 2009 Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses.

Paul is the executive producer of Northwest Ten, a company devoted to the development and production of ten-minute plays written by Northwest playwrights. NW10’s inaugural show, Free the Northwest Ten!, premiered in 2009 at Lord Leebrick Theatre. He is also a member of the Dramatists Guild and sits on the Lord Leebrick Board of Directors.

As an actor, Paul recently appeared in The Clean House, Mother Courage and Her Children, and Last Train to Hicksville at Lord Leebrick. Other recent roles include Antigonus in The Winter's Tale at Lane Community College, and the Grandfather in Dance Theatre of Oregon's adaptation of Heidi.

Before writing plays, Paul wrote fiction and poetry. His short stories and poems have appeared in a number of online and print journals, most recently Contrary Magazine. He has worked as a technical writer in California and Oregon for over twenty years. His nonfiction book Spirit of Courage: A Tribute to People with Disabilities was placed on the New York Public Library's list of Best Books for the Teen-age in 1996.

A native of Santa Cruz, California, Paul now lives in Eugene, Oregon, with his partner, the novelist Cai Emmons.