DAN HUNTER is a playwright, songwriter, teacher and founding partner of Hunter Higgs, LLC, an advocacy and communications firm. Hunter is the inventor of H-IQ, the first assessment of individual imagination and ideation, available online at www.h-iq.comHunter has written three books of humor about his home state of Iowa: Iowa?,,,It's a State of Mind, Let's Keep Des Moines a Private Joke, and The Search for Iowa (& We Don't Grow Potatoes). He performed for many years as a singer, songwriter, and humorist known for songs like Walkin' Beans, Ballad of the Iowa Pork Queen, and Please Don't Burn Perry Como.He has written several plays including Un Tango en La Noche (winner of a national Kennedy Center award) and La Mujer Sin Cara (The Woman Without a Face). His play The Monkey King was a finalist for the 2004 Heideman Award from the Actors Theatre of Louisville. Hunter's play, Red Elm, was one of three plays nominated in 2005 for the Best New Play of the Year award by the Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE).

The Boston Globe called Hunter's Legally Dead, a black comedy, "uproarious" and "over the top." Hunter is also a columnist for the online journal Arrowsmith Press. He taught creative writing at Boston University for17 years. Hunter has 25 years' experience in politics and arts advocacy, serving as Director of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs (a cabinet appointment requiring Senate confirmation) and running a successful advertising and political consulting firm in Des Moines. He has one-act plays published by Baker's Plays, including Mirror Man, Internal Medicine, and The Monkey King. He is the composer and writer of Picture Postcard Musicale, based on the texts of picture postcards from 1906 to 1910. Hunter has performed a one-man show of topical humor in original song, and he has made numerous radio and television appearances, including on ABC's Good Morning America, National Public Radio, BBC, and CNN Nightly News.