Ruth Margraff wrote 6 critically-acclaimed martial arts operas with the late composer Fred Ho for the Apollo, Guggenheim Museum, LaMama, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Ruth's recent writing includes Mirror Butterfly her jazz opera for climate refugees with Afro Yaqui Music Collective at New Hazlett Theater (Pittsburgh), Kennedy Center Millennium Stage (DC), National Ensemble Theater plenary (Tucson), 1st Mesopotamian Water Forum (Kurdistan, Iraq), and released on Innova Records at Red Rooster/Ginny's and the National Jazz Museum (Harlem); Temptation of the Fresh Voluptuous for the Nisville Jazz Teatrski Festival (Serbia), Red Tape/Art Institute Ballroom (Chicago), Coe Marquis Series Sinclair Stage (Iowa); and haiku for Bella Gaia with NASA holographic imagery. With her Café Antarsia Ensemble she wrote Previously Blue, Three Graces, Wellspring, Judges 19: Black Lung Exhaling which have toured all over the US and internationally. Ruth has received awards from Rockefeller, McKnight, NEA, and Fulbright foundations. She is a member of Theater Without Borders and League of Professional Theater Women, and is a Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.