Hudes, Quiara Alegria

A playwright and educator, Quiara Alegría Hudes won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Water by the Spoonful. Variety hailed the play as “a combination poem, prayer and app on how to cope in an age of uncertainty, speed and chaos.”

Hudes made her New York debut with the drama Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2007. The New York Times welcomed Hudes' "confident and arresting voice," calling the play "a theater work that succeeds on every level while creating something new."

Hudes’ book for Broadway’s In the Heights was also a Pulitzer finalist and a Tony nominee, and the piece won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2008 before touring nationally and internationally to widespread acclaim. New York magazine called In the Heights "an extraordinary blend of old and new, a stylistically groundbreaking 21st-century musical."

Originally trained as a musician, Hudes studied classical piano, Afro-Cuban piano, American music, and composition. She received a bachelor’s degree in music composition from Yale University and a master of fine arts degree in playwriting from Brown University. Though she no longer composes, Hudes continues to engage music as a deep and common thread in her playwriting. She has collaborated with master musicians like Michel Camilo and Nelson Gonzales, folding their profound musical expression into her dramatic structures.

Hudes serves on the Dramatists Guild Council and as a Board Member at Philadelphia Young Playwrights, the organization that produced her first play in the 10th grade. Much of Hudes’ writing is set in Philadelphia, her hometown. She has been honored for her creative exploration of that city’s divergent communities, including a Resolution from the City of Philadelphia and her personal favorite honor – being among the first group of women inducted into the Central High School Hall of Fame since the public school’s founding in 1836.

Hudes lives in New York with her husband and daughter.

Quiara Alegría Hudes joined The Pulitzer Prize Board in 2012.