Lynn Nottage (born November 2, 1964) is an American playwright whose work often deals with the lives of marginalized people. She is a professor of Playwriting at Columbia University.
She was the first (and remains the only) woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice; the first in 2009 for Ruined, and the second in 2017 for Sweat. She is also a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship award winner (2007).
Lynn Nottage was born in Brooklyn, New York; her mother Ruby Nottage was a schoolteacher and principal; her father Wallace was a child psychologist. She went to Saint Ann's School for elementary school, and graduated from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School. While in high school, she wrote her first full-length play, The Darker Side of Verona, about an African-American Shakespeare company traveling through the south.
She attended Brown University (AB 1986, DFA 2011) and the Yale School of Drama (MFA, 1989). After graduation, Nottage worked in Amnesty International's press office for four years.
Recently, Nottage premiered the play, Floyd's, at the Guthrie theater in Minneapolis, MN. She wrote the book for the world premiere musical adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd's novel The Secret Life of Bees (2019). Current work includes an opera adaptation of her play Intimate Apparel composed by Ricky Ian Gordon, commissioned by The Met/Lincoln Center Theater. It was scheduled to premiere at Lincoln Center in spring 2020 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. She is also writing the book to the upcoming musical MJ, featuring the music of Michael Jackson.
Nottage is married to filmmaker Tony Gerber with whom she co-founded the production company, Market Road Films. They have two children, Ruby Aiyo and Melkamu Gerber. They live in New York.
Ruby Aiyo Gerber attended Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, New York, before attending Brown University where she concentrated in Africana Studies and poetry through the lens of Black temporality. During her time at Brown, Gerber served as President of Students for Sensible Drug Policy and as co-editor of Bluestockings Magazine. Gerber graduated in 2020 during the COVID-19 global pandemic.
[Biographic information derived from the Lynn Nottage website, Wikipedia, and other online sources.]