Quiara Alegría Hughes

Quiara Alegría Hudes was born in Philadelphia in 1977. Although her biological father was Jewish, Hudes’s mother and her stepfather are Puerto Rican, so she was raised in a Puerto Rican household. Hudes began writing and composing music at a young age, studying piano at a local branch of the Settlement Music School, music composition at Yale University, and finally playwriting at Brown University. Since then, she has written plays, musicals, and children’s books, and is a visiting professor at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, though she is most widely recognized as a playwright. Her first career success Yemaya’s Belly was published in 2003, winning multiple awards, and had its first stage production in 2004. Elliot, a Soldier’s Fugue, the first in the Elliot trilogy, premiered in 2006 and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2007. Hudes went on to collaborate with famed playwright and actor (and fellow Puerto Rican) Lin-Manuel Miranda, producing the children’s musical Barrio Grrrrl! and Broadway musical In the Heights, which won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2008. Both musicals were also Pulitzer Prize finalists. Hudes won her first Pulitzer Prize for Water by the Spoonful in 2012, which revisited the soldier Elliot and became the second piece of the trilogy, which she finished with 2013’s The Happiest Song Plays Last. Hudes continues to write plays, compose music, and even develop movie scripts. Her latest stage production is Miss You Like Hell, a piece the L.A. Times described as “an immigration musical for the new Trump era.” Hudes lives in New York with her husband and children.