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 Maria Irene Fornes was born in Havana, Cuba on 14th May 1930. Following her father's sudden death she emigrated with her mother and a sister to the US, arriving in Manhattan as a Spanish speaker, in 1945. In the following year a brother arrived and in the next year another sister joined them in the US. Two older brothers remained in Cuba. One moved to the US in 1961 whilst the eldest, Raphael Fornes, "Cuco" remained. His letters to Fornes contributed to her creation of Letters From Cuba (2000). Sadly, he died in December 2005.
As a teenager in New York Fornes briefly attended a Catholic school but left school early taking various unskilled jobs. Fornes spent increasing time in Greenwich Village and there she trained with the painter Hans Hoffman, moving to his summertime Provincetown classes to pursue her painting studies. On the basis of some enthusiastic advice from a friend who thought she would enjoy Paris, Fornes traveled there intending to paint in France and Spain. It was whilst in Paris that, at a friend's recommendation - and not then speaking French - Fornes saw the original Roger Blin production of Samuel Beckett's En attendant Godot . Lucky's dilemmas would come to echo throughout many Fornes plays where her characters struggle from innocence towards experiences so often unattainable.
 Returning to Greenwich Village in 1957, Fornes worked as a self-employed textile designer creating scarves, which were sold on commission. Although she had by then recognised that she lacked the 'passion' to be a painter it had not yet occurred to her to become a playwright. Fornes has acknowledged that seeing Burgess Meredith's 1958 New York production of Ulysses in Nighttown (adapted by Marjorie Barkentin from James Joyce's Ulysses with Zero Mostel as Leopold Bloom) combined with her own Paris experience of seeing Godot to trigger her imagination. She would become 'obsessed' over a period of nineteen days with writing what would become the absurdist Tango Palace (1964). Written in English, like the majority of her work, initially it was staged by the Actors Workshop in San Francisco and directed by Herbert Blau. At this time, she was already established amongst an avant-garde Greenwich Village artistic community which was small, but would become increasingly influential. From Tango Palace, Fornes has gone on to write over forty plays. See Plays.
Fornes was amongst the Off-Off Broadway artists who mixed at venues such as the Judson Poet's Theatre, La MaMa, and the Café Cino. In this milieu she would design and create sets and costumes for her own plays and for the works of others. She wrote The Successful Life of 3 (1965), Promenade (1965), Dr. Kheal and Molly's Dream (1968) amongst her other plays of the 60s. These were busy years in which she wrote ten works, including a brush with Broadway via The Office (1966) whilst Promenade (1965), with music by Al Carmines, an inspirational minister at the Judson Church, was an early commercial success. Fornes also became well established as an important participant at the annual summertime Padua Hills Festivals, California.
 In 1972 Fornes worked with Ed Bullins, Rosalyn Drexler, Adrienne Kennedy, Rochelle Owens, Sam Shepard and Megan Terry to create New York Theatre Strategy, a space where playwrights could test out their ideas and have control over their work. Administration of this project would take up a lot of Fornes' time and energy. However, in 1977 Fefu and Her Friends was produced under her direction at New York Theatre Strategy. Fefu gives a group of women gathering to discuss an education project, and as with other Fornes plays, it concerns characters seriously seeking some greater understanding of their lives. Although the conservative mainstream initially withheld approval, it has come to be recognised as an innovative and important American play and continues to be one of Fornes' most produced works. Fefu was sparked by some dresses she found in a thrift shop, a characteristic start for this playwright and a method valued from the avant-garde 'happenings' of the 50s and 60s. A keen observer of her surroundings and of others, Fornes is a playwright who pays particularly close attention to her plays' visual appearance. The staged interiors of her plays have a characteristic elegance and simplicity. She also listens intently to the use of language and its pauses, and is exacting in achieving from the actors precise movements and placings on stage. Fornes' hallmark stagings and the visual impact of her work - often written as the play develops during rehearsals - have evolved in collaboration with the skills of three specific artists she has repeatedly worked with - Gabriel Berry for costume design, Donald Eastman for set design and Anne Militello for lighting design. See Costume, Lighting and Set Design.
Also during the 1970s, Fornes began what has become a long collaboration with INTAR, Hispanic American Arts Center, New York City. At the invitation of Max Ferra, INTAR's Artistic Director, she began her search for a 'Hispanic sensibility'. In what would become highly influential workshops she taught many aspiring writers. Working from this early understanding of the importance of widening access to develop Latino theatre in the US, Fornes has used her workshops to teach, nurture and mentor many younger playwrights and theatre practitioners at many other venues - both across the US and internationally. Although these workshops have now been held in many countries the early INTAR form holds true of seeking to create an almost Buddhist-like space, of using yoga exercises to relax, of visualisation and writing exercises and the sharing in the creative task. This workshop method has also been influenced by Fornes' early experience of painting classes where students were taught and worked in class together rather than in isolation and by the creative techniques at the Actor's Studio Playwrights Unit where she watched Lee Strasberg's acting and directing classes. Fornes has acknowledged that the Method influenced her work from The Successful Life of 3 (1965) onwards. She also retains early experience from Gene Frankel's acting classes, which she briefly attended. Fornes has not only directed many of her own plays but has translated and directed works of others including Calderón, Ibsen, Chekhov and contemporary plays of younger playwrights she has encouraged. See Direction, Adaptation and Translation.
In the 1980s and 1990s Fornes wrote and directed amongst other key works, Evelyn Brown (1980), The Danube (1981), Mud (1983), Sarita, (1984), The Conduct of Life (1985) Abingdon Square (1987), and Enter The Night (1993). Ironically, she has been criticised as too Hispanic in, for example, her plays Sarita (1984) and The Conduct of Life (1985), which do indeed draw upon her understanding of her Hispanic religious, cultural and family history. Then again, as with her last play, Letters From Cuba (2000), Fornes' works have been criticised as not Hispanic enough. Although she regards herself as a feminist she has also found herself being criticised for not being feminist enough. In part, these criticisms probably reflect her dislike of the didactic, her avoidance of the easier popularity of membership of a group, and her insistence that the audience should surrender to the experience of the play itself as a work of art. The audience must think and search for insights within themselves rather than expect the playwright to provide solutions for them.
There have been many prizes and prestigious awards for Fornes, not least the nine Obies awarded by The Village Voice. See Awards and Honours.
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