Sybil Berry, a native of Los Angeles, arrived in Pittsburgh nearly in 1992 to pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree in playwriting a Carnegie Mellon University. She became active in Pittsburgh's artist community and a member of Kuntu Repertory Theatre. Since then, she has written several plays and staged productions including Public Images, Private Lives, a contemporary view of the African-American community's reaction to Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas and The Sable Skin of the Hottentot Venus, a fictionalized account of the life of the Southern African brought to England and put on display for her physical features. Her most current project, doubling as her MFA thesis, is a musical based on the nightclub life of Pittsburgh's Hill District in the 1930s. With The Miracle Church, Miss Berry has achieved great success in winning 2nd prize in the American College Festival's Lorraine Hansberry Award and making her directorial debut.