Lynn Nottage: Boerum Hill's Two-Time Pulitzer Playwright
- Marina Aris
- Jul 8
- 3 min read
A note from our founder
Our seventh tribute in this new chapter goes to a playwright who holds a distinction no other woman in history has matched. Lynn Nottage grew up in Boerum Hill, and she's spent her career putting marginalized, working-class lives — especially the lives of women of color — at the center of the American stage.
A Boerum Hill Beginning
Lynn Nottage was born on November 2, 1964, in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Boerum Hill. She graduated from the High School of Music & Art before earning her BA from Brown University and an MFA in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama. Before committing to theater full-time, she spent four years working as a press officer for Amnesty International.
Theater Rooted in Empathy and Research
Nottage is widely regarded as one of the most significant and influential voices in contemporary American theater. Her work is defined by deep historical consciousness, profound empathy, and a fierce commitment to bringing marginalized, working-class communities — particularly women of color — to the center of the stage. Her process is famously immersive, often built on years of field interviews and local journalism before a single scene gets written.
The Only Two-Time Winner
Nottage holds a singular place in theatrical history as the first and only woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice: first in 2009 for Ruined, her devastating Congolese war drama, and again in 2017 for Sweat, her searing chronicle of factory closures and deindustrialization in Reading, Pennsylvania.
Still Teaching, Still Home in Brooklyn
Her honors include a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and a Tony Award nomination for her play Clyde's. She is currently a Professor of Theater at Columbia University and remains a resident of her native Brooklyn.
Selected Plays & Published Works
While primarily a dramatist whose "books" are published scripts, her most influential theatrical texts include the following.
Poof! (1993) — A sharp, surreal short play exploring domestic abuse, where a woman's abusive husband suddenly combusts into a pile of ash.
Intimate Apparel (2003) — A gorgeous, deeply moving historical play about Esther, a lonely African American seamstress in 1905 New York who creates exquisite lingerie while dreaming of love and autonomy.
Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine (2004) — A satirical companion piece to Intimate Apparel, following a ruthless, successful Black PR executive who goes bankrupt and is forced to move back to her childhood home in the housing projects.
Ruined (2008) — Her first Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, set in a rain-forest bar and brothel in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, detailing the resilience of women surviving sexual violence.
By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (2011) — A witty, multi-decade screwball comedy that satirizes the historical racial dynamics of Golden Age Hollywood through the life of a pioneering Black maid-turned-actress.
Sweat (2015) — Her second Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, charting the fractures of race, class, and friendship among steelworkers in Rust Belt Pennsylvania as their factory begins layoffs and lockouts.
Mlima's Tale (2018) — A haunting, lyrical play that tracks the ghost of a magnificent elephant named Mlima as his tusks are trafficked through the corrupt global ivory trade.
Clyde's (2021) — A Tony-nominated, sharply funny and hopeful workplace comedy set in a truck stop sandwich shop staffed entirely by formerly incarcerated individuals seeking redemption.
READ NOTTAGE
Start with Ruined or Sweat to see the two plays that made history, or Clyde's if you'd rather begin with her warmer, more hopeful register. Either way, you're encountering a playwright whose Brooklyn roots run straight through everything she's written since. Get the book.
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