Quiara Alegría Hudes

Quiara Alegría Hudes (born 1977) is an American playwright and composer. She wrote the book for the musical In the Heights. She won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Water by the Spoonful. Her play Elliot, a Soldier's Fugue was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Hudes was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a Jewish father and a Puerto Rican mother. They raised her in West Philadelphia, where she began composing music and writing. She also studied at the Mary Louise Curtis Branch of Settlement Music School, taking piano lessons with Dolly Krasnopolsky. She has stated that although she is of "Puerto Rican and Jewish blood", she was "raised by two Puerto Rican parents". Her step-father was a Puerto Rican entrepreneur. She graduated from Central High School. She studied music composition at Yale University, where she earned her B.A., and playwriting at Brown University, earning an M.F.A. She is a resident writer at New Dramatists and a previous Page 73 Playwriting Fellow. For the academic year 2011–2012, Hudes, a visiting writer in the theater department at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, taught an advanced intensive course in playwriting.

The original Off-Broadway production of In the Heights received the Lucille Lortel Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical. It was named Best Musical of 2007 by New York Magazine and Best of 2007 by the New York Times, and garnered Hudes an HOLA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Playwriting from the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors.

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