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The 2013 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Drama
For a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).

Disgraced, by 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.
Lee Bollinger and Ayad Akhtar

Lee C. Bollinger, President of Columbia University (left), presents the 2013 Drama prize to Ayad Akhtar.

Winning Work

Disgraced

By

Ayad Akhtar

Excerpt from "Disgraced"
By Ayad Akhtar
Directed by Kimberly Senior
Played October 7 - December 23, 2012 at the Claire Tow Theater at Lincoln Center Theater

DISGRACED is the story of Amir Kapoor (Aasif Mandvi), a successful Pakistani-American lawyer who is rapidly moving up the corporate ladder while distancing himself from his cultural roots. When Amir and his wife Emily (Heidi Armbruster), a white artist influenced by Islamic imagery, host a dinner party, what starts out as a friendly conversation escalates into something far more damaging.

-- posted by LincolnCenterTheater

Biography

Plays include "The Invisible Hand" (Repertory Theater of St Louis). Also a novelist, he is the author of American Dervish, a novel published by Little, Brown & Co. He co-wrote and starred in "The War Within" (Magnolia Pictures), released internationally and nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay. As an actor, he starred as Neel Kashkari in HBO's adaptation of Andrew Ross Sorkin's "Too Big to Fail." He studied at Brown University and Columbia University's School of the Arts.

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Drama in 2013:

Amy Herzog

A drama that shows acute understanding of human idiosyncrasy as a spiky 91-year-old locks horns with her rudderless 21-year-old grandson who shows up at her Greenwich Village apartment after a disastrous cross-country bike trip.

Gina Gionfriddo

A searing comedy that examines the psyches of two women in midlife as they ruefully question the differing choices they have made.

The Jury

Peter Marks(Chair )

drama critic

Jill Dolan

director, program in gender and sexuality studies, Annan Professor in English, and professor, theater program, Lewis Center for the Arts

John Fleming

performing arts critic

Alexis Soloski

drama critic

Donald Margulies*

playwright and adjunct professor of English and theatre studies

Winners in Drama

2012

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.
2011

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.
2010

Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey

A powerful rock musical that grapples with mental illness in a suburban family and expands the scope of subject matter for musicals.
2009

Lynn Nottage

A searing drama set in chaotic Congo that compels audiences to face the horror of wartime rape and brutality while still finding affirmation of life and hope amid hopelessness.
See All Drama

2013 Prize Winners

Fiction

Adam Johnson

An exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart.
Poetry

Sharon Olds

A book of unflinching poems on the author's divorce that examine love, sorrow and the limits of self-knowledge.
Music

Caroline Shaw

A highly polished and inventive a cappella work uniquely embracing speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects (New Amsterdam Records).
History

Fredrik Logevall

A balanced, deeply researched history of how, as French colonial rule faltered, a succession of American leaders moved step by step down a road toward full-blown war.
See All 2013 Winners