While Monica Raymond has never been homeless, she has sometimes found herself so cash poor she had to choose between paying carfare and doing the laundry. A poet and playwright based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she has been honored by the Massachusetts Cultural Council in both fields. Her play, THE OWL GIRL, about two families who both have keys to the same house and try to live in it together, has received the Clauder Gold Medal, the Castillo Theater prize for political playwriting, the Peacewriting Award, and was deemed one of "Ten Best New Jewish Plays of 2015."