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The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Drama

Finalist: Selling Kabul, by Sylvia Khoury

A riveting portrait of an Afghan family under extreme wartime duress that explores the agonizing personal choices and human costs of those who aided the effort in Afghanistan at their own peril.

Nominated Work

Selling Kabul

By

Sylvia Khoury

Behind the Scenes: 'Selling Kabul''s Virtual Rehearsal Process (Playwrights Horizons)

New York premiere
Produced in association with Williamstown Theatre Festival

AFIYA
My stupid brother. If you step outside that door, You murder your child. You murder your wife. You murder my husband. You murder me.

Taroon once served as an interpreter for the U.S. military in Afghanistan. Now it is 2013, and the Americans — and their promises of safety — have begun to withdraw. Taroon spends his days in hiding, a target of the increasingly powerful Taliban. On the eve of his son’s birth, he must remain in his sister’s apartment, or risk his life to see his child. With shattering precision, Sylvia Khoury’s tense drama traces the human cost of U.S. immigration policy and the legacy of our longest war. 

-- from the Playwrights Horizons production page

Biography

Sylvia Khoury is a New York-born writer of French and Lebanese descent. Her plays include Selling Kabul (Playwrights Horizons, Williamstown Theater Festival), Power Strip (LCT3), Against the Hillside (Ensemble Studio Theater) and The Place Women Go. She is currently under commission from Lincoln Center and Williamstown Theater Festival. Awards include the L. Arnold Weissberger Award and Jay Harris Commission and a Citation of Excellence from the Laurents/Hatcher Awards. She is a member of EST/ Youngblood and a previous member of the 2018-2019 Rita Goldberg Playwrights’ Workshop at The Lark and the 2016-2018 WP Lab. Her plays have been developed at Playwrights Horizons, Williamstown Theater Festival, Eugene O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference, Roundabout Theater Underground, Lark Playwrights’ Week, EST/Youngblood, and WP Theater. She holds a BA from Columbia University and an MFA from the New School for Drama. She obtained her MD from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in May 2021.

Winners

Prize Winner in Drama in 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. Drama

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Drama in 2022:

Kristina Wong

A humorous and moving performance piece detailing how the author became the founder of a homemade face mask operation in the early months of the COVID epidemic, reflecting on the significance of women of color performing an historically gendered and racialized form of labor at a time of rising anti-Asian bigotry.

The Jury

Misha Berson(Chair)

Freelance Arts Writer and Former Drama Critic, The Seattle Times

David John Chávez

Chair, American Theatre Critics Association; Correspondent, San Jose Mercury News

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

Playwright and Associate Professor of Practice in Playwriting, University of Texas at Austin

Alisa Solomon

Professor of Journalism and Director in Arts Concentration, MA Program in Journalism, Columbia University

Robert Weinert-Kendt

Editor-in-Chief, American Theatre

Winners in Drama

2021

Katori Hall

A funny, deeply felt consideration of Black masculinity and how it is perceived, filtered through the experiences of a loving gay couple and their extended family as they prepare for a culinary competition.
2020

Michael R. Jackson

A metafictional musical that tracks the creative process of an artist transforming issues of identity, race, and sexuality that once pushed him to the margins of the cultural mainstream into a meditation on universal human fears and insecurities.
2019

Jackie Sibblies Drury

A hard-hitting drama that examines race in a highly conceptual, layered structure, ultimately bringing audiences into the actors’ community to face deep-seated prejudices.
2018

Martyna Majok

An honest, original work that invites audiences to examine diverse perceptions of privilege and human connection through two pairs of mismatched individuals: a former trucker and his recently paralyzed ex-wife, and an arrogant young man with cerebral palsy and his new caregiver.
See All Drama

2022 Prize Winners

Feature Writing

Jennifer Senior of The Atlantic

For an unflinching portrait of a family’s reckoning with loss in the 20 years since 9/11, masterfully braiding the author's personal connection to the story with sensitive reporting that reveals the long reach of grief.
See All 2022 Winners