Jonathan Padget was born in 1970 in Greenwood, S.C., where he grew up studying piano and French horn and performing in community theater productions. He attended Catawba College in Salisbury, N.C., where he was an English major and was active in the theater and music departments; he received his BA in 1993.

He spent several years in Charlotte, N.C., working in the marketing department
at Opera Carolina and establishing himself as a freelance journalist, before relocating to Washington, D.C., in 1996 for a one-year residency with the Cathedral Volunteer Service Community at Washington National Cathedral.

He worked in the nonprofit sector before joining the editorial staff of Metro Weekly magazine in 2001. From 2003 to 2011, he worked in the newsroom at The Washington Post, serving as an editorial assistant, the Arts Beat columnist, a copy editor and a multiplatform editor, as well as an occasional feature writer for the Sunday Arts and Weekend sections. In August 2011, he joined the progressive public relations firm PR Solutions as an account executive.

His 10-minute play “He Says, I Think, I Say” premiered at City Theater Company in Wilmington, Del., in 1997 and was produced in Washington by Source Theatre Company in 1999. He has performed in the Washington area with the Reston Community Players and the Elden Street Players. He is also a choral musician whose experience includes a season with the Oratorio Singers of Charlotte and a season with the Cathedral Choral Society in Washington.

He created the book, music and lyrics for “The Blue Lagoon: A Musical,” which premiered in the 2007 Capital Fringe Festival and was subsequently produced in New York, Orlando and Los Angeles.

He is married to Scott Wells.