Retired playwright and activist, Holly Beye was born in Iowa City, Iowa, in 1922, the oldest of six children. A graduate of Swarthmore College in 1943, she hotfooted it to New York to live in Greenwich Village, where she began writing for PM NEWSPAPER and soon met her future husband, David Ruff. The two lived for four years at 120 Charles Street, West Greenwich Village, before moving to San Francisco in 1950, then returning to New York s Woodstock area in 1955. Beye became active in theatre by writing, producing, and acting in plays produced off-off-Broadway in New York, San Francisco, as well as in the Kingston-Woodstock area. Two of her one act plays were featured in Quarterly Review of Literature and produced by Poets Theatre. In 1960 Beye and Ruff became active in the Civil Rights Movement, helping to found the Kingston, NY, branch of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality. The couple divorced in 1964. Ruff has gone on to live and create art in Italy with showings in New York City, San Francisco, Woodstock, and Turin, Milan, and Naples in Italy. Beye has continued to write for the stage and to found two regional theatre groups: The Heads and Holly s Comets. In 2004, Holly Beye was injured in an accident related to her 20 year struggle with multiple sclerosis, and has been living in Ten Broeck Commons, a Lake Katrine nursing home, where she contributes to the newsletter, conducts meditation sessions, and works on her writing.