Lynn Nottage

Lynn Nottage was born in 1964 in Brooklyn to schoolteacher and principal Ruby Nottage and child psychologist Wallace Nottage. She attended Fiorella H. LaGuardia High School (which specializes in visual and performing arts), during which time she wrote The Darker Side of Verona, her first full-length play. Nottage went on to earn her bachelor’s degree from Brown University, followed by an MFA from the Yale School of Drama in 1989. After this, Nottage worked at Amnesty International’s press office and went on to write several plays—most notably Intimate Apparel; Ruined; By the Way, Meet Vera Stark; and Sweat. She earned her DFA from Brown in 2011 and has received honorary degrees from Julliard and Albright College. Nottage is married to Tony Gerber, with whom she has two children; she and Gerber are cofounders of Market Road Films production company. Nottage won Pulitzers for both Ruined and Sweat, making her the first and only woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice. She’s also the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, a Merit and Literature Award from The Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Guggenheim Grant, among several other awards and honors. Nottage is currently a professor of playwriting at Columbia University.