NEW YORK CITY: The Lark has announced playwright Leah Nanako Winkler as the recipient of the 2017-19 Jerome New York Fellowship. Nanako Winkler is the author of Kentucky, Two Mile Hollow, and Death for Sydney Black. She will receive a stipend of $25,000 in her first year and $15,000 in her second year, with an additional $5,000  for various creative expenses. The fellowship is given to a promising young playwright to support a new work. Nanako Winkler will succeed Mary Hamilton, the previous Jerome Fellow.

As a resident at the Lark, Nanako Winkler will meet regularly with artistic director John Clinton Eisner and will be a significant member of the Lark’s community of artists. Residents are also offered a variety of on-site and offsite workshops.

Nanako Winkler is a Japanese-American playwright from Kamakura, Japan and Lexington, Ky. She is an alumnus of Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Youngblood group, a 2016-18 Time Warner Fellow at WP Theater, a member of the Ma-Yi lab, and the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writer’s Group at Primary Stages. She was awarded the first-ever Mark O’Donnell Prize from the Actors Fund and Playwrights Horizons in 2017, and is currently one of the inaugural playwrights to receive a commission from Audible’s emerging playwrights fund. Leah was selected from a pool of 286 applicants.

“To this day, I view theatre not as a ridiculous life choice but the passion that followed me,” said Nanako Winkler in a statement, adding that it has given her “the defining sense of home that has motivated me to keep writing for the past decade in this great city.”

The Jerome New York Fellowship was inspired by the successful Playwrights of New York Fellowship, which was also supported by the Jerome Foundation. The Lark also has several other fellowships including the Van Lier New Voices Fellowship, the Apothetae and Lark Playwrighting Fellowship, among others to support playwrights across the country.