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Finalist: Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2, 3) , by Suzan-Lori Parks

A distinctive and lyrical epic about a slave during the Civil War that deftly takes on questions of identity, power and freedom with a blend of humor and dignity.

Winners

Prize Winner in Drama in 2015:

Stephen Adly Guirgis

A nuanced, beautifully written play about a retired police officer faced with eviction that uses dark comedy to confront questions of life and death. Drama

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Drama in 2015:

Jordan Harrison

A sly and surprising work about technology and artificial intelligence told through images and ideas that resonate.

The Jury

Dominic P. Papatola(Chair )

theater critic

Misha Berson

drama critic

Elysa Gardner

entertainment critic

Lynn Nottage*

playwright

Marc Robinson

professor of English and theater studies

Winners in Drama

Annie Baker

A thoughtful drama with well-crafted characters that focuses on three employees of a Massachusetts art-house movie theater, rendering lives rarely seen on the stage.

Ayad Akhtar

A moving play that depicts a successful corporate lawyer painfully forced to consider why he has for so long camouflaged his Pakistani Muslim heritage.

Quiara Alegría Hudes

An imaginative play about the search for meaning by a returning Iraq war veteran working in a sandwich shop in his hometown of Philadelphia.

Bruce Norris

For "Clybourne Park," a powerful work whose memorable characters speak in witty and perceptive ways to America's sometimes toxic struggle with race and class consciousness.

2015 Prize Winners

Anthony Doerr

An imaginative and intricate novel inspired by the horrors of World War II and written in short, elegant chapters that explore human nature and the contradictory power of technology.

Julia Wolfe

A powerful oratorio for chorus and sextet evoking Pennsylvania coal-mining life around the turn of the 20th Century.

Stephen Adly Guirgis

A nuanced, beautifully written play about a retired police officer faced with eviction that uses dark comedy to confront questions of life and death.

David I. Kertzer

An engrossing dual biography that uses recently opened Vatican archives to shed light on two men who exercised nearly absolute power over their realms.