The University of Scranton Weinberg Memorial Library Distinguished Author Award Honoring Ayad Akhtar

Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright. His work has been published and
performed in over two dozen languages. He is the winner of the Pulitzer
Prize for Drama, the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit for Fiction, and an
Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Akhtar is the author of Homeland Elegies (Little, Brown & Co.), which The
Washington Post called “a tour de force” and The New York Times called “a
beautiful novel…that had echoes of The Great Gatsby and that circles, with
pointed intellect, the possibilities and limitations of American life.” His
first novel, American Dervish (Little, Brown & Co.), was published in over
20 languages. As a playwright, he has written Junk (Lincoln Center,
Broadway; Kennedy Prize for American Drama, Tony nomination); Disgraced
(Lincoln Center, Broadway; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony nomination); The
Who & The What (Lincoln Center); and The Invisible Hand (NYTW; Obie Award,
Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award, Olivier, and Evening Standard
nominations).
Among other honors, Akhtar is the recipient of the Steinberg Playwrighting
Award, the Nestroy Award, the Erwin Piscator Award, as well as fellowships
from the American Academy in Rome, MacDowell, the Sundance Institute, and
Yaddo, where he serves as a Board Director. Additionally, Ayad is a Board
Trustee at New York Theatre Workshop, and PEN America, where he serves as
President. In 2021, Akhtar was named the New York State Author, succeeding
Colson Whitehead, by the New York State Writers Institute.