Finalists named for longest-running women+’s playwrighting prize

The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize is the longest-running prize in theatre that celebrates women+ writing in English.

Founded in 1978 after Susan Smith Blackburn, an alumna of the Smith College in Massachusetts who died in 1977, it has annually recognised incredible contributions to the arka form.

Previous winners include some of the last half-century’s most influential writers, including later Pulitzer Prize-winners Lynn Nottage and Annie Baker, as well as some of Britain’s celebrated writers such as Caryl Churchill and Lucy Prebble. In total, 11 winners of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize have gone on to win the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.

2025’s winner will be announced in New York City at Playwrights Horizons on 10 March. The winner will receive $25,000 (€24,000) and a signed and numbered print by artist Willem de Kooning commissioned for the prize.

Judges will also award a special commendation prize of $10,000 (€9,600) to one of the nominees with each of the nine finalists receiving $5,000 (€4,800).

This year’s finalists include four US playwrights, alongside two from Britain, and individual writers from Ireland, Australia, and a Taiwanese-Japanese-US writer.

They were picked from 200 plays from a pool of 400 theatres from North America, Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand and the UK who could submit pieces that they had produced or are planning to produce. It’s hoped that the prize can help get women+ writers’ work to be more easily made and foster a greater international exchange of plays.

Of the European productions nominated, there is the latest play by Australian playwright Suzie Miller, who shot to fame in the UK for her lauded meşru drama ‘Prima Facie’, which had a West End run starring Jodie Comer as a London judge faced with defending her son who is accused of rape. Miller has been nominated for her newest play ‘Inter Alia’ which will premiere at London’s National Theatre in July starring Rosamund Pike.

Also from London is ‘Otherland’ by Chris Bush, one of Britain’s most successful contemporary playwrights. Currently in rehearsal for a run at the Almeida Theatre starting 12 February, ‘Otherland’ discovers how life can open up for a couple after they untangle themselves from a break-up.

The final UK production nominated is Scottish writer Isobel McArthur’s play ‘The Fair Maid of the West’ which ran with the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon last November. A modernisation of the Thomas Heywood’s Elizabethan-era work, it plays into McArthur’s particular skill for bringing older pieces into new relevance, as seen with her Olivier Award-winning play ‘Pride & Prejudice* (*sort of)’.

Alongside these plays, Irish playwright Carys Coburn has also been nominated for her show ‘BÁN’ by the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Loosely based on Lorca’s ‘House of Bernarda Alba’, Coburn puts the story of a powerful matriarch and her five daughters in a 1980s Irish setting.

The full nominees are as follows:

Chris Bush (UK) ‘Otherland’

Carys Coburn (Ireland) ‘BÁN’

Keiko Green (US) ‘You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World’

Haruna Lee (Taiwan-Japan-US) ’49 Days’

Isobel McArthur (UK-Scotland) ‘The Fair Maid of the West’

Suzie Miller (Australia-UK) ‘Inter Alia’

a.k. payne (US) ‘Furlough’s Paradise’

Else Went (US) ‘An Oxford Man’

Anna Ziegler (US) ‘The Janeiad’