Irene Sankoff

Irene Sankoff is a Canadian librettist and composer–lyricist, best known for co-writing the Broadway musical Come from Away with her writing partner and husband, David Hein. After spending several years studying and working in New York the couple returned to Toronto where Hein wrote a song, My Mother's Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding, about his mother and her later life partner. Sankoff and Hein expanded the song into a play that became a hit at the Toronto Fringe Festival in 2009 and then picked up by Mirvish Productions for a run at Toronto's Panasonic Theatre before touring Canada.