William Finn

William Alan Finn (born February 28, 1952) is an American composer and lyricist of musicals. Finn was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He is Jewish, and grew up in Natick, Massachusetts with his parents, and siblings, Michael and Nancy. While attending Natick High School, Finn competed with the Natick Speech Team. He majored in music at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. When he graduated, he received the Hutchinson Fellowship (a musical composition award).

Finn is known for being an autobiographical writer. His work centers around the LGBTQ+ and Jewish experience in modern day America and he often uses his own experiences for artistic inspiration. Finn is most known for his trilogy of short musicals, In Trousers, March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland. Finn combined the latter two shows to create Falsettos (1992), which received the 1992 Tony Awards for Best Music and Lyrics and for Best Book of a Musical. His next major success came with A New Brain (1998), which is loosely based on his own near-death experience following brain surgery. Other notable works include The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (2005) and Elegies: A Song Cycle (2003). Finn is a member of the NYU Tisch Graduate Program in Musical Theatre Writing faculty and is the co-founder and artistic producer of the Musical Theatre Lab at the Barrington Stage Company.