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The 2026 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Drama

Finalist: Meet the Cartozians, by Talene Monahon

A drama that uses the historical lens of the Armenian American experience to illustrate the enduring hypocrisies of our country’s racialized system of immigration.

Nominated Work

Meet the Cartozians

By

Talene Monahon

About the Play (Second Stage Theater)

Tony Award winners Andrea Martin and Will Brill star in Meet the Cartozians alongside Raffi Barsoumian, Nael Nacer, Susan Pourfar, and Tamara Sevunts.

Part riveting historical drama, part scorching satire, Talene Monahon’s Meet the Cartozians pulls back the curtain on a startling chapter of American history you may never have heard.

This bold, witty new play follows two sets of Armenian Americans: one man fighting for legal recognition in the 1920s, while a century later, his descendant fights for followers and a competent glam team. A wildly imaginative and deeply compelling story of culture and heritage, Meet the Cartozians asks who gets to belong — and at what cost?

-- from the Second Stage Theater production page

Biography

Talene Monahon is a person of Armenian and Irish descent and a playwright of actor descent. Off-Broadway: The Good John Proctor (Bedlam Theater, The New Yorker’s “Top 10 Best Plays of 2023”), Jane Anger (New Ohio; 2022 Off-Broadway Alliance Best New Play Nominee), How to Load a Musket (Less than Rent; TheaterMania’s “The 10 Best Theater Productions of 2020”), and Frankie & Will (MCC). Regional: Trinity Rep, Shakespeare Theater of D.C., The Warehouse Theater, Maryland Ensemble Theater, and Peterborough Players. International: The Good John Proctor (Jermyn Street Theater, London, Off-West End Nominee–Best New Play). Her plays have been developed with SouthCoast Rep, Classic Stage Company, Lincoln Center, Clubbed Thumb, Northern Stage and LA Shakespeare. Talene’s work is published by TRW, and has also been featured in The Cincinnati Review and McSweeney’s. She teaches Playwriting at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Education: B.A. Senior Fellow, Dartmouth College. Talene was featured in the NYTimes 2023 list of “Rising Theater Stars.”
 

Winners

Prize Winner in Drama in 2026:

Bess Wohl

A striking blend of comedy and sincerity that explores the legacy of the consciousness-raising feminist groups of the 1970s, using the story of the playwright’s mother to demonstrate how the movement grew out of conversation, and that anyone experiencing the play has joined the discussion. Drama

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Drama in 2026:

Nazareth Hassan

A play focused on two skateboarders, aspiring hip-hop artists who begin to compose an album, with downtime fueling their creative process and nascent romance.

The Jury

Helen Shaw(Chair)

Theatre Critic, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Quiara Alegría Hudes*

Playwright and Author, New York City

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins*

Playwright and Professor in the Practice of Theater and Performance Studies, Yale University

Charles McNulty

Theatre Critic, Los Angeles Times

Harvey Young

Dean, College of Fine Arts; Interim Vice President for the Arts; Professor of English, Theatre Arts, American Studies and African American & Black Diaspora Studies, Boston University

Winners in Drama

2025

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

A play about the complex dynamics and legacy of an upper middle class African-American family whose patriarch was a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement, a skillful blend of drama and comedy that probes how different generations define heritage.
2024

Eboni Booth

A simple and elegantly crafted story of an emotionally damaged man who finds a new job, new friends and a new sense of worth, illustrating how small acts of kindness can change a person’s life and enrich an entire community.
2023

Sanaz Toossi

A quietly powerful play about four Iranian adults preparing for an English language exam in a storefront school near Tehran, where family separations and travel restrictions drive them to learn a new language that may alter their identities and also represent a new life.
2022

James Ijames

A funny, poignant play that deftly transposes "Hamlet" to a family barbecue in the American South to grapple with questions of identity, kinship, responsibility, and honesty.
See All Drama

2026 Prize Winners

Opinion Writing

M. Gessen of The New York Times

For an illuminating collection of reported essays on rising authoritarian regimes that draw on history and personal experience to probe timely themes of oppression, belonging and exile.
See All 2026 Winners