NEW YORK CITY: The Lark has announced that playwright Mary Hamilton will receive the 2015–17 Jerome New York Fellowship. In addition to creative support, the fellowship includes $40,000 over two years, as well as a $5,000 Opportunity Fund for travel and research.

Hamilton—author of We Three, The Plan, One of the Women, and The Building and Unbuilding of the Saxophone Sunset—was selected from a pool of 194 applicants for the prize. She will succeed Jackie Sibblies Drury, who was the first Jerome Fellow.

“The Jerome’s financial and artistic support will allow me to prioritize writing as a job for the first time since having my daughter,” Hamilton said in a statement. “To get to do what you want to do, not as a crazy pastime that you spend most of your time financing with other gigs, but as the actual thing you are doing, is an awfully validating feeling,”

Hamilton will meet regularly with artistic director John Clinton Eisner and other program staff for project and career planning, as well as take part in a playwright’s financial literacy boot camp offered by the Lark and Playwrights of New York.

“Mary has a distinctive, brave and honest artistic voice,” said Lloyd Suh, the Lark’s director of onsite programs, in a statement. “This is a critical point in her career, as she has been balancing her extraordinary talent with substantial family and work responsibilities. We’re honored to welcome her into our community of artists as part of an expanding roster of life-sustaining fellowships.”

The fellowship is supported by the Minnesota-based Jerome Foundation, which was established by Jerome Hill and is dedicated to contributing to the growth and vibrancy of the arts.