Quiara Alegría Hudes is an American playwright and author best known for writing the book for the Tony Award-winning musical In the Heights.
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Hudes was born to a Jewish father and a Puerto Rican mother, who raised her in West Philadelphia, where she began composing music and writing.[1] She graduated from Central High School. She studied music composition at Yale University, where she earned her B.A., and playwriting at Brown University, earning an M.F.A. She is a resident writer at New Dramatists and a previous Page 73 Playwriting Fellow. She is married and has a daughter.
In its original Off-Broadway incarnation, In the Heights received the Lucille Lortel Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical; was named Best Musical of 2007 by New York Magazine and Best of 2007 by the New York Times; and garnered Hudes an HOLA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Playwriting from the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors.
Hudes' first play, Yemaya's Belly, received the Clauder Prize, the Paula Vogel Award in Playwriting, and the Kennedy Center/ACTF Latina Playwriting Award and received numerous productions around the country. Her play, Elliot, a Soldier's Fugue, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2007 and has been performed around the United States, Romania and Brazil. Her newest play, 26 Miles, will receive its world premiere at The Alliance Theatre in Atlanta in the 2008-09 season. She is currently writing a children's musical, Barrio Grrrrl!, for The Kennedy Center.
In 2010, she was named a Fellow by United States Artists.[2]
Hudes's first children's book will soon be published by Arthur Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc.
On October 27, 2011, Quiara Alegría Hudes was the second female (and first Hispanic) to be inducted into Central High School's Alumni Hall Of Fame.