NEW YORK CITY: Jacqueline Goldfinger has won the Yale Drama Series Award for her play Bottle Fly. The prize comes with the $10,000 David Charles Horn Prize. The Yale Drama Series Award is presented by Yale University Press and funded by the David Charles Horn Foundation.
“Set in a bar in the Everglades, Jacqueline Goldfinger’s Bottle Fly brings together a rich variety of American classes, cultures, heritages, and desires,” said judge Nicholas Wright in a statement. Wright, a British playwright, chose Bottle Fly from more than 1,000 submissions from 45 countries. He describes the play as “passionate and straight from the heart; the world it shows us is earthy, cruel, and hilarious; the story at its core is one of profound and reckless love.”
Bottle Fly will be published by Yale University Press and will receive a staged reading at the National Theatre in London. The runner-ups for the prize are Andrew Rosendorf for Cottontail and Carla Grauls for Natives.
“Bottle Fly was the first full play that I wrote after having children,” said Goldfinger in a statement. “I found myself reflecting on the stories that I’d been told growing up, and those I would choose to tell my children. I was also inspired by Octavio Solis’s family drama, Lydia, as well as by the disappearing Everglades culture, which is being overrun by asphalt highways, spendthrift retirees, and other forms of ‘progress.’ Thanks to the Horn Foundation and Yale Drama Series, Bottle Fly will have the opportunity to be read, seen and shared around the world. I could not be more grateful.”
Goldfinger is based in Philadelphia. Her play The Arsonists will have a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere in the 2017-18 season. She currently serves as the education director at PlayPenn, a play-development laboratory.
The David Charles Horn Foundation was established in 2003 by Francine Horn, in memory of her late husband. It offers writers opportunities to be published and supports emerging playwrights.