Dramatists Guild Foundation Names Gloria Oladipo As 2024 Thom Thomas Award Winner

The Dramatists Guild Foundation has named Gloria Oladipo as the recipient of the 2024 Thom Thomas Award, given annually to an alumnus of the DGF Fellows program who demonstrates great artistic skill. 

Since 2016, DGF has awarded the Thom Thomas Award to commemorate playwright Thom Thomas' endless passion for nurturing the next generation of dramatists and his appreciation of DGF's support of writers. The Award grants the recipient $10,000 to use towards livelihood expenses, project expenses, travel expenses – anything that will support their ability to create their best work.

Gloria Oladipo is a playwright and critic based in New York (but proudly from Chicago, IL). She writes Black comedies about Black families who are generationally unhappy, who do not know how to love each other, but do the very best they can. She is incredibly grateful to be the 2024 recipient of the Thom Thomas Award. Gloria is a 2023-2025 Public Theater's Emerging Writers Group Fellow. Gloria is a 2025 Velvetpark Writers Fellow. She is a 2022-2023 Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow alumnus and a previous Seven Devils New Play Conference resident, with her play The Care and Keeping of Schizophrenia (and Other Demons); an excerpt of the play will be published in the Cincinnati Review. She is a Gingold Group Speaker's Corner Fellow alumnus, with her play I Wanna Kill, Annie G. Gloria's work has been in residence or developed by New York Stage and Film in Poughkeepsie, New York; the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York, New York; Boston Court Pasadena in Pasadena, California; Workshop Theater in New York, New York; the Fresh Ground Pepper Group, and other institutions.

Gloria is also an award-winning cultural critic and journalist. She is a race and equity reporter for the Guardian, reporting on culture, politics, and more. She is the 2023 recipient of the American Theatre Critics Association's Edward Medina Prize for Excellence in Cultural Criticism. She is a 2022 National Critics Institute Fellow at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, an opportunity she was selected for via the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF). She later taught theatre criticism at KCACTF. Gloria's work has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, and other publications. Bachelor of Arts and Sciences from Cornell University. gloriaoladipo.com

The Thom Thomas Award is made possible through the generous support of Thomas's longtime friends and colleagues, Iris Rainer Dart and the late Helen Lee Henderson, and his late husband Janis Purins. 

“Thom was a thoughtful, gifted man and writer and my close friend for sixty years,” Rainer Dart said about the award. “I am proud to have been one of the founders of this award and moved by the legacy he left behind. Thom wanted to give young writers the breathing room and the time to create. Thanks to this award, they will have some measure of both.”

Past recipients are: Zeniba Now (2023), Avi Amon (2021); Erika Dickerson-Despenza, Julia Meinwald, Benjamin Velez (2020); Riti Sachdeva (2019); Stefanie Zadravec (2018); Sylvan Oswald (2017); and Chisa Hutchinson (2016).  

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