Stage Play Reviews
"a burning portrait of a young Asian American woman...still haunted by the memory of growing up one block from where Richard Speck killed eight nurses."
From Lawrence Bommer's WCT review of Okita's short play
Richard Speck which was part of the American Blues Theatre
production MONSTERS.
"Two of the best pieces come drenched in black. Lee Chen is exquisite in Dwight Okita's partly comic, partly scary reminiscience of growing up Asian American near where the Richard Speck murders took place."
From Sid Smith's Chicago Tribune review of Richard Speck
"The Rainy Season presents what few new plays even approximate: an accurate, honest, compelling picture of life in our times. At the same time, Okita's poetic sensibility imbues this realistic drama with a nearly mythic quality...Okita's protagonist is a remarkable construction: an everyman figure who is both Japanese American and gay...The Rainy Season is an eloquent examination of the nature of love, from its most sublime to its most excruciating."
From Justin Hayford's Reader review
of The Rainy Season
"Dwight Okita pulled off a stunning romantic melodrama a few years ago in his heartbreaking, near-mythic story of impossible love, The Rainy Season."
Justin Hayford referencing my play
in a review of another play
Novel Reviews
"The write stuff: Gay writer Dwight Okita was originally one of 5,000 entrants in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest, Amazon.com's first writing competition in search of the next great American novel—and just missed taking the grand prize for his work, The Prospect of My Arrival."
Windy City Times looks back at 2008:
The year in review by Andrew Davis