Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright Paula Vogel to Give Public Presentation

Paula Vogel. Photo credit: Blonde + Co.

Photo credit: Blonde + Co.

Literary luminary to serve campus residency in March 

The Harold & Ethel L. Stellfox Visiting Scholars & Writers Program brings major literary figures to campus annually for a residency, and this year’s Stellfox scholar is the internationally acclaimed American playwright Paula Vogel. Vogel will give a free, public presentation on March 19 at 7 p.m. in Allison Great Hall, followed by a Q&A and book signing.  

Her works, which have been widely produced worldwide and in multiple languages, include the Pulitzer Prize-winning play How I Learned to Drive (also awarded the Lortel Prize, Obie Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle and New York Drama Critics Award: Best Play), Mother Play and Indecent (both nominated for a Tony Award: Best Play).  

Vogel's many honors include induction in the Theater Hall of Fame, the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, the Lily Award, the Thornton Wilder Prize, the Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the William Inge Award, the Elliott Norton Award, a Susan Smith Blackburn Award, the PEN/Laura Pels Award, a TCG Residency Award, a Guggenheim, a Pew Charitable Trust Award and numerous fellowships and residencies. She is particularly proud of her Thirtini Award from 13P and awards in her name: the Paula Vogel Award for playwrights, given by the Vineyard Theatre, and the Paula Vogel Award given by the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. 

Vogel founded Bard at the Gate, a virtual reading series designed to become a widely accessible platform for powerful, overlooked plays by BIPOC, female, LGBTQIA+ and disabled artists, and she is the founder and past director of the playwriting program at Brown University. A former playwright-in-residence at the Signature Theatre, Vogel additionally started a theatre workshop for women in maximum security at the Adults Correction Institute in Cranston, R.I. From 2008 to 2012, she was the O’Neill Chair at the Yale School of Drama. 

The Stellfox program is named in honor of the parents of esteemed English teacher Jean Louise Stellfox '60, who met the poet Robert Frost during his 1959 visit to campus when she was a Dickinson student. She was inspired by that experience and made it her life’s work to instill a similar passion for literature in others. She left the bulk of her estate to Dickinson to carry on her lifelong mission, and the program named in her parents’ honor was formed to fulfill that wish after her 2003 death.

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Published January 20, 2025