Christopher Maly

Born 1973

Lincoln High School English teacher Christopher Maly has received numerous awards for plays written to help students dramatize and understand social justice issues. His 2006 play This Unsafe Star: The Story of Emmett Till received the National Education Association's 2008 Trenholm Award for Civil and Human Rights. He created a 2012 dramatic reading, The Ghosts on the Wall to introduce students to a trove of some 200 letters found by a Lincoln, Nebraska man that described the life of his paternal grandparents in Germany, 1939-1941, before they disappeared in the Holocaust. His 2018 play The Blues of Knowing Why explored the tragedy and repercussions of the June 26th 1969 death of 14 year-old Vivian Strong in Omaha, who was shot in the back of the head by an Omaha police officer as a group of teenagers fled a party. Maly received the 2015 Lincoln Mayor's Art Award and the 2017 Leola Bullock Multicultural Teacher of the Year award from Lincoln Public Schools, among others.

Places Lived

Lincoln, NE

Author Of

Play/Screenplay

Keywords

Playwright;

Occupation

Drama teacher, Lincoln High School, Lincoln, NE

Places Worked

Lincoln High School, Lincoln, NE

Honors

National Education Association Trenholm Award for Civil and Human Rights, 2008
Award of Excellence from the Nebraska Department of Education, 2014
Lincoln Mayor's Arts Award, 2015
Scholar Educator at Bezos Family Foundation, 2015
Lincoln Public Schools Leola Bullock Multicultural Teacher of the Year, 2017.
Lincoln, Nebraska NAACP Lenora Letcher Award

Associations

Great Plains Theater Conference
Union for Contemporary Art
Omaha Community Playhouse

Bibliography

This Unsafe Star: The Emmett Till Story. 2006. (play)
The Ghosts on the Wall. 2012 (dramatic reading)
The Blues of Knowing Why. 2018 (play)

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