NEW YORK CITY: The Dramatists Guild of America has named Lydia Diamond the recipient of the 2020 Horton Foote Playwriting Award. Diamond will receive the $25,000 prize in July.

Now in its fifth year, the award recognizes a dramatist whose work “seeks to plumb the ineffable nature of being human.” The award, which is sponsored by the Richenthal Foundation, is named in honor of the late playwright Horton Foote. Previous winners include Stephen Karam, Rajiv Joseph, James Anthony Tyler, Amy Herzog, and Heidi Schreck.

Diamond’s plays include Toni Stone (Audelco Nomination, best play), Smart People, Stick Fly (Broadway), Voyeurs de Venus (Joseph Jeff Award), The Bluest Eye, The Gift Horse, Harriet Jacobs, The Inside, and Stage Black. Her work has been developed and produced at American Conservatory Theater, Arena Stage, Arden Theatre, Chicago Dramatists, Company One, Congo Square, Denver Center, the Goodman, the Guthrie Theatre, Hartford Stage, Huntington Theatre Co., Jubilee Theatre, Kansas City Rep, Long Wharf, the McCarter, MPAACT, New Vic (New York), Playmakers Rep, the Roundabout, Second Stage, Steppenwolf, TrueColors, Writers Theatre, and ACT.  Commissions include: Arena Stage, Second Stage, Steppenwolf, McCarter, Huntington, Victory Gardens, Writers Theatre, True Colors and the Roundabout.  Diamond was a W.E.B. Du Boise Institute at Harvard non-resident fellow, a TCG/NEA Playwright in Residence at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, a Huntington Playwright Fellow, a Sundance Institute Playwright Lab Creative Advisor, a Radcliffe Institute Fellow, and Playwright in Residence at Arena Stage, and has been a Sally B. Goodman McCarter Theatre Artist in Residence. She is a Northwestern graduate (’91) and has an honorary doctorate from Pine Manor College. Diamond was a consulting producer for Showtime’s fourth season of The Affair, co-writing episodes 406 and 407 (nominated for a Writer’s Guild Award for best Drama Episode). She is currently developing a one-hour drama at NBC/Paramount. Diamond was on faculty at Boston University for nine years and is currently on faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where most recently she directed Intimate Apparel and In The Next Room or the Vibrator Play.