Emjo Basshe (born Emmanuel Iode Abarbanel Basshe or Emanuel Joseph Jochelman; January 20, 1898 – October 29, 1939) was a Lithuanian-born Jewish American playwright of Spanish ancestry and theatre director who co-founded New York City's New Playwrights Theatre in 1926. A recipient of 1931 Guggenheim Fellowship for creative work in theatre and drama, and one of the initial members, in 1935, of the Communist Party-founded League of American Writers, he won first prize for Thunderbolt, also referenced as Thunder-Clock, which was judged in a University of Chicago competition to be the "best unproduced long play of the year 1935".